Fatigue driving, speeding main contributors to road crashes - NRSA

The National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) has said after a 12-year investigation, it found out that road crashes are mostly caused by fatigue driving and speeding.

The investigation was conducted into 19 major crashes on some highways in the country that had claimed 345 deaths.

This was revealed during a meeting with transport heads of commercial transport operators on compliance audit report and presentation of road crashes investigation findings.

"47 percent of the drivers were sleeping momentarily as a result of fatigue driving, 37 percent were involved in wrongful overtaking and faulty manoeuvres whilst speeding," the findings revealed.

"12 percent of the crashes was due to speeding and loss of control and 4 percent was due to road environment," the investigations revealed.

Some of the memorable accidents are the Dawa accident that claimed 20 lives in 2010, the Kintampo Waterfall head-on-collision that claimed 63 lives in 2016 and Kintampo Amoma Nkwanta where two buses collided, and one got burnt, resulting 60 deaths in 2019.

The Dompoase accident in 2020 claimed 34 lives, the Akumadan accident in 2021 with six deaths, and the Asuboi accident where a bus crashed into a fallen container claiming 11 lives amongst others were investigated.

Whilst 15 out of 19 crashes (79 percent) had occurred at night between 2000 hours and 0500 hours, 14 out of 19 crashes (74 percent) were head-on-collision and partial sideswiped.

Also, 14 out of 19 (74 percent) of the incidences occurred when at-fault drivers veered off their lane and crossed over onto the other lane led to collisions.
The findings also indicated that 14 out of the 38 (37 percent) drivers involved in the 19 investigated crashes survived.

It was revealed that 42 percent of the crashes occurred on the N10 highway which begins at Kumasi and travels north to Burkina Faso and 26 percent happened on N6 highway which also starts from Accra through Nkawkaw to Kumasi.

Whereas 21 percent occurred on the Takoradi-Accra section of the N1 highway, 11 percent occurred on the Tema-Aflao section of the N1 highway.

"79 percent of the investigated crashes occurred in the Eastern, Ashanti, Bono, and Central Regions whilst the 21 percent occurred in the Savannah, Volta, and Great Accra Regions," the findings revealed.

The NRSA had therefore called for a national policy on night driving and a national campaign on fatigue driving, wrongful overtaking, and speeding.

It also demanded swift action of strictly regulating operations of the transport industry where standards and systems such as co-driving or relay driving system, speeding, driving hours, mandatory stops, journey planning, tracking system, and seatbelt usage would be in place.

The Authority also called for the dualisation of highways as a long-term solution with partial dualisation as a short-term measure.