The Director-General of the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), Abraham Amaliba, has called for a coordinated approach to road safety in Ghana, saying that education, enforcement, road engineering, and emergency response must work together to reduce road crashes and save lives.

Speaking on Joy Prime’s Dialogue on Road Safety Crisis, Mr Amaliba said weaknesses in any of these areas could undermine efforts to make the country’s roads safer, even when public education campaigns were ongoing.

He explained that road safety depended on several key interventions, including educating drivers and other road users, enforcing traffic laws, improving road infrastructure and providing timely emergency assistance to crash victims.

According to him, public education alone would not be enough to change driver behaviour if motorists believed they could ignore traffic regulations without facing punishment.

“There are three Es in road safety: education, enforcement and engineering, then you have emergency,” he said.

Mr Amaliba said the lack of effective enforcement could weaken the impact of road safety education, as some drivers might treat safety messages as mere advice rather than rules they were required to obey.

He explained that while education helped drivers understand road safety requirements, enforcement was necessary to ensure compliance.

“So if education is ongoing, but there is little enforcement, drivers consider the education as mere advice,” he said.

He added that some motorists might choose whether or not to follow road safety advice if they knew there was little chance of being caught or punished for breaking traffic regulations.

“But when there is enforcement, punishment would make them sit upright,” he stated.

The NRSA Director-General said this made enforcement a key part of efforts to improve discipline on Ghana’s roads, particularly among drivers who continued to disregard traffic rules despite public education campaigns.

Mr Amaliba identified road engineering as another important part of the road safety system, pointing to the need for properly designed and maintained roads, clear road markings, visible pedestrian crossings, adequate street lighting and functioning traffic lights.

He said these responsibilities involved institutions mandated to construct, maintain and manage road infrastructure.

He said that improving driver behaviour alone would not resolve the road safety crisis if the physical conditions of roads continued to expose motorists and pedestrians to danger.

According to him, the relevant institutions must work together to ensure that roads are properly marked, crossings are visible, and traffic control systems function as intended.

Mr Amaliba also raised concerns about emergency response following road crashes, warning that the failure to provide timely and professional assistance could worsen the consequences for victims.

He said Ghana must strengthen its emergency response arrangements to ensure that people involved in crashes receive appropriate care as quickly as possible.

“We don't want to get to the emergency stage where the ambulance service is not brought in,” he said.

He expressed concern about situations in which crash victims were handled by people without the necessary training while waiting for professional assistance.

“Because we don't have the ambulance service working, it technically means people go there when there's an accident. We start picking up the people the way they pick them, and they may be dead because they are not professional,” he said.

Mr Amaliba said countries that had made progress in road safety had done so by ensuring that the different parts of the system worked effectively.

“All this is not working, and countries that have succeeded are because all this are working well,” he said.

When asked which single intervention he would prioritise if given the resources to tackle road crashes, Mr Amaliba said he would focus on enforcement.

He said that people who had obtained driving licences were expected to have received at least some education on road safety through driving schools.

“I would deal with enforcement. I believe anybody who's behind the steering wheel is assumed to have some little information and education because you are going to driving school, and that driving school educated you.”

He added that he would therefore direct available resources towards ensuring that drivers complied with traffic laws.

He said that drivers were more likely to exercise caution when they knew that law enforcement officers were present and that violations could attract penalties.

“People don't do what you expect. They do what you expect,” he said, adding the role of predictable consequences in shaping behaviour.

To illustrate the challenges facing enforcement, Mr Amaliba pointed to the practice of drivers warning one another when they approached police checkpoints.

He observed that some motorists became more cautious when they knew officers were monitoring the road, while others alerted fellow drivers to the presence of checkpoints.

“You have noticed that most of the time, when drivers are on the road, they give signals to their colleagues when they know that there's a police checkpoint somewhere,” he said.

The practice, he said, illustrated how the presence of law enforcement could influence driver behaviour.