A Pitiable Fatality

The Kumasi accident which claimed a number of lives, two of them being kids waiting for their school bus on Tuesday morning, broke the hearts of many, especially parents.

We can only imagine the reaction of the parents of the dead kids when the unexpected news was broken to them.

Some of us could not look at the picture of one of the kids as he lay on the floor dead through the stupidity of an angry truck driver.

When kids, especially those on their way to school, die through the recklessness of drivers, it is painful and provokes a lot of questions about the kind of human beings who are licensed to manage such vehicles on our roads.

It was such a needless fatality caused by one of the senseless commercial drivers who ply our roads and pose great danger to all of us.

Road safety continues to elude the appropriate template in the country, the result of which is needless fatalities on both highways and intra-city roads.

There are little grounds we have not covered in our commentaries on road safety in the country. It appears, however, that there is no letup in the bedlam that is the feature of our roads.

Parents are uneasy when their kids leave for school, fearing that they could be victims of such recklessness on the roads. This is the case, especially with parents who do not accompany their kids to school.

In the Kumasi case, it is interesting to note that the kids were waiting for their school bus as noted in an earlier paragraph, yet the DAF driver drove into them on the side of the road, the height of irresponsible driving.

The driver is said to have been infuriated by the conduct of a cabbie and therefore decided foolishly to chase him to vent his anger in a built-up area.

We have stated it before that there is the need to take another look at the persons who apply for commercial drivers’ licence in the country. Most of the fatal accidents in the country in the past couple of years or so emanated from human error.

Such avoidable fatalities can only be avoided by demanding that commercial driving applicants meet certain basic qualifications before being considered to drive commercial vehicles.

The taxi driver who provoked the DAF truck driver into chasing him could have driven his car recklessly, a common occurrence in urban centres of the country.

Had the DAF driver thought about the likely consequences of what he did, he would have restrained himself from doing so.

Such restraints can only be applied by people who fall within a certain age bracket and with basic literacy. These are facts backed by empirical and verifiable data.

Some commercial drivers, especially taxis and trotros, fall below 20 and given their propensity to be exuberant behind the steering wheels, they pose grave danger to the passengers who entrust their lives into their hands.

Let the National Road Safety Commission consider another approach to the avoidable deaths of especially kids on our roads.

A national conversation on this subject will not be a bad idea at all. Let all the stakeholders think about such a proposition and act accordingly.

Source: Daily Guide (editorial)