Redesign Our Roads!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

On Wednesday, August 17, an accident involving a Yutong bus plying the Accra-Kumasi road was reported to have somersaulted – or upended – when the driver of the said bus attempted to overtake another vehicle. Several passengers were also feared to have died as a direct result of the apparent operational error of the Yutong bus driver (See “Many Feared Dead in Suhum Accident” Spyghana.com 8/17/11).
The brief news item, whose anonymous reporter promised further details in due course, raised several questions which, I am sure, investigators would shortly latch onto and emerge with a comprehensive report as to precisely what had caused such a deadly accident.
In the meantime, we must hasten to promptly observe the fact that anybody who has lived in Ghana for any remarkable span of time, knows full well that the number one cause of motor accidents involves relatively speeding motorists who often try to overtake drivers ahead of these speeding motorists who may not be driving fast enough, and may thus be causing an unnecessary clogging of traffic. The all-too-common reality, though, is that in most cases drivers attempting to overtake their fellow motorists have been clearly determined to have been driving far in excess of the official speed limit.
The accident in question occurred in the Suhum area on the Accra-Kumasi road, an area not very far from my paternal hometown of Kyebi, where a legion number of accidents have occurred in the past and show no palpable signs of abating. That area, if faded memory serves me right, is not far from a major passenger-bus terminal serving such nodal transit destinations as Asamankese and Koforidua, the Eastern regional capital, as well as the Okwawu commercial and medical center of Nkawkaw.
In reality, this type of road accident significantly has quite a lot to do with the grim fact that to-date, most of Ghana’s major highways are still single-lane, which means that during rush-hour periods when traffic is at its heaviest, drivers in any particular direction, such as those plying the North-South Kumasi-Accra route, have little room to maneuver, particularly in terms of being able to increase their speed or even drive at the officially stipulated speed limit if the motorists ahead of them, who may likely be residents of the area, are cruising leisurely.
What needs to happen is two-fold; one, the government ought to require that new major roads and/or highways currently under construction, as well as those to be constructed in the near future, be designed to have at least two lanes in either direction. A half-century-plus after the end of British colonial rule gives us no tenable reason to be still stuck in the old ways of doing things. For not only are single-lane roads too deadly and thus cost-defective, they also unnecessarily thwart the efficient movement of humans, goods and services, thus significantly slowing down the growth and development of the national economy. Needless to say, except where it is technically determined to be the most feasible, single-lane roads ought to be the last choice on our road-construction agenda.
Two, the government, through its Ministry of Road Transport, ought to ensure the adequate provision of road signage, particularly those displaying speed limits and the structural and architectural design of these roads, as well as the rate of flow of pedestrian traffic. And where vehicular traffic is unusually high throughout most of the day, electronic signs with up-to-the-minute information on traffic and weather conditions ought to be mandated. The latter signage may seem to be quite expensive in the initial stages, however, such cost, when measured against road safety, could not be more economically sound.
Then, there must also be constructed commercial rest stops manned by armed security guards every twenty-five or fifty miles where, for reasonable fees, fatigued long-distance drivers could rest around the clock. Such rest stops could contract with reputable caterers and vendors to provide guest motorists with Food and Drugs Board-approved provender.
Ultimately and in the short term, radar-equipped traffic policing must be adequately and rigidly enforced. Readers ought not be surprised if Election 2012 partially comes to be determined by the extent to which the Mills-Mahama government has kept faith with Ghanaian voters vis-à-vis the efficiency and safety of our road transport system.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of 22 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].
###