Let’s change road behaviour to restore safety

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 3.6 called for a 50 per cent reduction in the number of global road traffic deaths by 2020. That didn’t happen. If anything, road traffic accidents in Kenya have increased in recent years. Between January 2015 to January 2020, road fatalities and injuries increased by 26 per cent and 46.5 per cent respectively.

In 2018, road accidents killed 3,004 Kenyans. Many among them died in the seven black spots along the Nairobi-Kisumu-Eldoret Highway. One year later in 2019, road accidents took the lives of 3,900 Kenyans. This year in 2020, 2,689 Kenyans have already lost their lives on our roads. Among them were 60 people who lost their lives the weekend after bars were recently reopened. Evidently, the free flow of alcohol that weekend resulted in fatal road accidents. This reminded me of my own drunk-driving days nearly three decades ago. I used to stagger into my Toyota Carib and drive it home. Like most drunk drivers, I had a misplaced albeit firm belief that the car knew its way home and it would get me there. Tragically, many drunk drivers in Kenya steer their cars into ditches, other cars, motorcycles and into pedestrians.