We can stop the accidents on Mombasa Road

The police will casually tell you two people are killed every day on Mombasa Road between Nyayo National Stadium and City Cabanas.

They will also tell you as a matter of fact, just like they say you have to be naked to take a bath no matter who you are, these statistics often skyrocket.

I feel the chill when on this road because I have seen too many accidents. Last year I suffered a sleepless night after driving through the site of an accident in which a motorist killed, and I mean killed, a mother and her two children, opposite Total Petrol Station in South ‘C’.

Mombasa Road is a microcosm of Kenya. What happens here reflects the situation across the country. I will not appraise the new traffic laws President Kibaki just assented to because our problem has not be lack of regulations but implementation, general indiscipline and primitivity. I use this term primitive without apology because that is what the monkeys stuffed inside Italian suits do once behind the wheel!

See, from my office I can see Mombasa Road and every day I do not miss the screeching of tyres, a clear sign another crash has taken place or almost did. The Kenya Red Cross has placed an ambulance on standby along this road and the cry of its siren shakes the heart for it is a perpetual reminder another tragedy has taken place.

I have also lost a colleague and two others seriously injured to this road. I can say this is the road to death that the Traffic Commandant needs to put under focus. Worse still, the death chain stretches to Mombasa itself and other Kenyan towns. In total over 3,000 graves are dug every year for road victims and thousands of those who survive burn up non-existent billions of shillings in hospital bills. Still others are reduced to life on wheelchair or crutches.

Let as ask the hard questions, and on this I thank an engineer friend who fed me insights I never appreciated about the apathy in police and other traffic regulation enforcement agencies I never knew existed.

Since Mombasa Road has no shoulders on which drivers whose vehicles break down can move to, why can’t Nairobi City Council have a standby towing vehicle at all the major highways leading to the belly of the city? To offset the cost of operating this fleet, which would quickly clear the roads, the owners would be surcharged reasonable fee.

This way we would eliminate cases of drivers, some with brains soaked in alcohol, who smash into stationary lorries. One of them last year uprooted a whole acacia tree complete with the roots with his Toyota saloon opposite Firestone, and unfortunately he never survived.

There is also this costless matter of having trucks fitted with beacon lights on the roof, to be activated when the vehicles break down, to warn motorists of the danger ahead. These lights on average cost Sh1,000. Surely to enforce this we do not have to keep lamenting about John Michuki’s absence from Transcom House.

There are also a dozen illegal turns motorists and boda boda chaps who seemingly are always on a suicide missions use, like the one opposite General Motors. This place is a blackspot and police seemingly do not care. If in doubt look out of the window when passing by, it is an extortion gate, particularly to the police on motorbikes.

If I were in charge, if caught, your vehicles would be impounded for a month or all the five tyres sliced with bayonets. Do not tell me about the Traffic Act, these guys are merchants of death, only that they do not die alone.

On the prowl

Police also need the technology to blacklist the offending drivers off the road. We do not need donors to do this. Even a First Year IT student can do this. We can’t let a guy kill endlessly on our road and go scot-free.

There is the other issue of missing road signs and bridge railings. Opposite GM, the railings have been missing, stolen by a scrap dealer who managed to hack them off at night with a generator-driven machine. Surely, do we no longer have night patrols on this city?

I do not support shoot-on-sight policy but for guys who cut off road signs, side-railings and lampposts, I might need to revise my thinking. But even after the rails were taken, no one has replaced them yet, not even with concrete. Maybe they are waiting for a bus to fall off to the railway line below then they act!

What of the zombies who drive lorries without rear lights, and with faded reflectors coated by the murk of whatever rubbish they carry around in the name of business? Are they not ‘murderers’ on the prowl? I want to say here most of what we call accidents is actually our own design to kill ourselves and others.

Accidents are inevitable, but what is caused by our negligence, drunkenness, indiscipline and primitivity is no accident, unless an innocent victim is caught in the mix.

There is a simple solution to the footbridges really; let corporate citizens along this road unite and save people from being killed right before their eyes everyday. Then the worst prescription; weka bumps!

That is what desperation does; if a good road kills, cut down speed until we know how to use them safely and without killing the angry and underpaid casual worker walking to his or her shanty.

Now my friends no single Presidential or Governor candidate is talking about how to curb road accidents and you also probably got tired reading this column today. That to me is the sad aspect of this problem, we either no longer care or have become fatalists who believe those killed were predestined to die anyway. No! no! no!