As part of efforts to reduce road traffic injuries and deaths in Ghana, a safety campaigner, Kojo Aidoo has appealed to government to ban dangerous vehicles from plying the roads of Ghana.
The safety campaigner has also asked the police and the Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) to strictly enforce traffic rules on safe driving in the country
In his address to the press as part of his monthly DRIVE SAFE CAMPEIGN series, Mr. Aidoo expressed worry that road traffic injuries and deaths are taking a great toll on the lives of the Ghanaian people.
According to him, Ghana has reached a grim milestone in terms of road traffic crashes with 771 persons dying between January and March this year alone.
“This is a revelation forming part of the data collated by the Motor Traffic & Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service”, he added.
He noted that the situation will not get any better if adequate measures are not taken to reverse the trend.
“My immediate concern in this fight has to do with unsafe or dangerous vehicles on our roads, which of course is one of the main courses of road crashes in the country”,
Mr. Aidoo said if these unsafe vehicles are taken off the streets, several road crashes will be avoided.
He expressed regret that many of the commercial vehicles are of poor standard, and are not suitable for carrying passengers.
He noted that some of these ‘death trap’ vehicles are not road worth, yet they have acquired road Worthy certificates to ply the roads. ‘Some of the vehicles too have hardly known any maintenance in a long time, with their drivers and owners working for their parochial interests.
Some of the vehicles are death traps waiting to course havoc at the devil’s own time, yet no one checks their operations’, he lamented’.
In conclusion, Mr. Aidoo called on the MTTD, as a matter of urgency to inspect the tires, lights, brakes, wipers, signal indicators, seating capacity, and general condition of vehicles to help reduce road crashes in the country.