Carnage: I’m confident my cameras can bring order to our roads

In recent weeks, we’ve been bombarded with news of accidents that have killed tens of people at a go. Reckless driving has become the norm, and sanity a rare quality on our roads.

Interventions launched by the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) and traffic police have yet to properly tackle the poor driving habits a lot of Kenyans display.

Most times, blame over who’s fault it is degenerates into a finger-pointing exercise that doesn’t lead to any proper action. This is the situation Peter Githae is hoping to do something about.

Through his company, Roadwise Solutions, the 34-year-old wants to spearhead efforts to bring order to the roads by installing specialised safety cameras on vehicles and conducting road safety courses.

“Ours is a campaign geared towards restoring hope for safer travel on the road and minimising the increase in fake insurance claims,” he says.

Initial resistance

Roadwise Solutions was launched in October 2016 and started with capital of Sh450,000. Peter used this money to import 50 safety cameras from the UK.

“When I launched the company, it was difficult for people to understand the benefits of having safety cameras mounted on their vehicles. Some told me that they’d had many vehicles with cameras, but this had not solved any issues around accidents,” says Peter.

To address this initial resistance, he invested in social media marketing and spoke to as many individual car owners and groups as he could on the benefits of his cameras. But it didn’t quite work out. Still, it’s said that persistence pays, and eventually it did for Peter.

An insurance firm called him up after it handled a claim where its client was involved in an accident but wasn’t clear on the details of it. The firm called Peter up for more details on his business.

“I had videos showing how these cameras work on American roads, so that’s what I went with. The company got interested and asked me to mount cameras on some of their vehicles. This was eight months after I started my business.”

The videos slowly gained traction, and Roadwise Solutions got more calls for camera mounts. The firm instals three types of cameras at a cost of Sh12,000, Sh15,000 and Sh50,000, depending on utility.

“The Sh50,000 cameras tend to be ordered by car hire companies and those who own high-end vehicles.

“The cameras are fitted to look like part of the rear-view mirror housing and hardwired so that they don’t leave visible wires. The cameras allow you to monitor the movement of your vehicle, record conversations inside the vehicle and view live videos on your computer,” explains Peter, who says his firm has so far sold about 6,000 units.

Driver behaviour

Further, the cameras also record driver behaviour, including overlapping, making unnecessary stops, using a mobile phone while driving and so on.

“Drivers who are aware of the cameras tend to make a conscious effort to drive in a careful manner, thus reducing the chances of causing an accident,” says Peter.

The recordings also help protect insurance firms from illegitimate claims as they can now rely on hard evidence, rather than descriptions provided by people whose motives may not be questionable.