Road Accidents: Drivers Blame Sleep, Alcohol, Indiscipline & Government

Drivers have blamed little sleep, alcohol, indiscipline, and the government, as the main causes of Ghana’s alarming road accidents.

Speaking in an interview with Oye Newsgh, the commercial public transport drivers said drivers were at fault for most road carnages but so were government.

They explained that lack of enough sleep, and indiscipline, which included over speeding, disregarding road signs, and drunk driving, were solely driver’s fault.

They however placed, abandoned faulty vehicles on roads without signs, broken traffic lights, and poor roads and designs, all causes of accidents on governments doorsteps.

“For someone its drinking alcohol, which can also bring it (accidents) about.

“At times, for someone too, he or she is feeling sleepy.

“He is tired, tiredness is also part”, Yaw Nkrumah, commercial public transport driver of a minivan noted.

Government were complicit doing nothing about broken down vehicles left in the middle of roads, Mr Nkrumah noted.

“There are times when some other car has broken down on the road, at once, you won’t see it, before you engage and emergency break, it’s too late.

“The AMA, when a car breaks down on the road, then they ignore it like they’ve not seen it.

“That in particular is very dangerous.

“When a car breaks down on the road, there are some cars when they break down on the road, you won’t notice, when you get close, at once then it (the accident) happens.

“There are some, when they break down on the road they are not supposed to be there on road for long.

“They (AMA) are supposed to come tow it from there but it will be there for very long hours till something (an accident) occurs before they come to tow it”, he said.

Another driver of commercial transport vehicle, Jonna Aidoo, said most road accidents were caused by drivers, blaming fatigue, lack of sleep, illness, and indiscipline.

“There are some too that has a disease, his body starts acting strangely, when that happens, you don’t know how to control the car.

“Sometimes too, you’re over-speeding or driving beyond the speed limit, then your break fails.

“If you weren’t speeding, you could have worked the car slowly to a stop.”, Mr Aidoo noted.

Mr Aidoo also added that, “someone may have not learnt driving to an acceptable level, but will want to work as a driver”.

Commercial public transport vehicle driver, Robert Nanayaw Asipi, told Oye Newgh that if road accidents were to stop, it would take drivers and government alike doing their jobs.

“There are some places where there have to be traffic lights, since there are no lights there.

“So when that happens, intersections like this, see many accidents occur there more”, he noted.

According to Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service, some 1, 250 people have been killed in road accidents from January to May 2021.

If that does not send a chill down your spine, maybe this would.

Ghana had recorded more road accident related deaths (771), than it had recorded coronavirus deaths (752) since the first COVID-19 positive case from January to March this year.

If the point is still lost on you, here it is, road accidents appear to be more fatal to Ghanaian lives than coronavirus.

The numbers back that claim up without a doubt.

Ghana’s death toll from COVID-19 since its first recorded case, as at June 7 2021, was 787.

This means road accidents in five months alone this year, has taken at least 463 more lives than coronavirus has in Ghana.