During this year’s Madaraka Day celebrations in Nairobi, President Kibaki raised concerns on rising road carnage that continues to claim lives, leaving many in grief.
The President cautioned drivers to be keen on traffic rules and ordered a crackdown on errant drivers. As usual, traffic police officers heeded the call and ‘harassed’ motorists for some time before the status quo made its way back to the roads.
This short term fix is inadequate déjà vu. I would have been happier to hear the President establish an accidents authority that would craft a strategic plan, rigorously monitored, to eliminate the loss of lives on our roads and to improve road manners.
Now accidents have returned to claim more lives on our roads thanks to human error among other causes. Can’t we find a permanent solution to road carnage? Is the Government doing its best in assuring safety on the roads? I doubt.
{Robert Kimutai, Nairobi}
Evidently, we have turned all our faculties to the incessant terror attacks, oblivious of the perpetual road carnages.
It is quite discreditable that the Minister for Transport has been nonchalant in taming the rising rate of road accidents, but hope the Traffic Amendment Bill will be law sooner and help restore sanity on the roads.
Unfortunately, these accidents come when the country boasts of vibrant traffic laws popularly known as the ‘Michuki Rules’ – though it seems they were literally buried with their late father, former Minister John Michuki.
It is sad that, in the recent past, road carnages and grenade attacks seem to have conspired against Kenya. Though we may have no control over accidents, a lot needs to change in the way we operate.
The culture of matatu conductors and drivers bribing traffic officers openly, and passengers alighting metres away from roadblocks only to walk or ride on waiting boda bodas past the officers and wait to be stacked again into the matatus after police have received ‘their due’ must end.
That matatus pay some figures in the first trips and operate with impunity in the subsequent trips as officers pretend to be busy on ‘phone calls’ must also stop.
Hopefully, the new law will give citizens a role to play in curbing road accidents and carnage.
{Onderi M Dennis, Gucha}
Who will save us now from these deaths? It is sad that, in two consecutive days, road accidents have claimed more than 20 lives.
