50% of road deaths caused by Okada riders - Prof Dodoo

Issues of Okada riders politicised - GSA boss

GSA to help streamline activities of Okada riders

Okada riders need to be checked, GSA boss

The Director General of the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), Prof. Alex Dodoo, has attributed half of all the road crashes in the country to the involvements of commercial motorbike riders.

He explained that while the activities of these Okada

Read full article.riders continue to claim lives on the roads, the issue remains a politicised one.

“Everybody knows ‘Okada’ is killing and yet people are politicising it. It is about time that we enforced our rules. You see the contribution of Okada to death, now I don’t know whether we can quantify; for me I will say it’s a minimum of 30, maybe 50% of all deaths can be directly or indirectly related to Okada. I will check the figures,” asaaseradio.com quoted him as having said.

He added that the indiscipline of these motorbike riders adds up to why they are fast-becoming the most notorious group known for causing road deaths.

“But we know for a fact that Okada has moved from being number 10 in the list to like number one or two of cause of deaths and everyone knows because they are not regulated. And you only have to go to Burkina Faso, Togo or Ivory Coast and they obey the rule,” he added.

However, as a way of regulating the activities of Okada riders and other motorists in the country, Prof Dodoo said that the GSA is rolling out the Ghana Automotive Code to help streamline these activities.

“Okadas are not regulated and because of this, most of their drivers do not follow traffic directives … they behave as though the road is theirs; putting lives at risk.

“In the next few weeks, you will see us launching the Ghana automotive code. The amount of deaths attributed to ‘Okada’ is too much … and this is because they are not regulated,” he said.