The National Road Safety Commission commends Ghanaians for a successful election and also conveys its best wishes to all road users and its stakeholders ahead of the yuletide season. The year 2012 marks the first full year of the implementation of the 10-year National Road Safety Strategy III and has been remarkable in many regards. For the first time, all Heads of the Public-sector Road Safety Implementing Agencies committed their agencies to the strategy by signing up to the National Road Safety Actions Plans while the Commission entered into a strategic public private partnership to provide towing solutions to disabled and abandoned vehicles. In the course of the year, the United Nations endorsed our road safety management programme with an invitation to the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly meeting on Road Safety as the only African Country to deliver a paper on the Ghanaian model. The Commission played a lead role to ensure that the Road Traffic Regulations 2012 (L.I.2180) came into force in July this year after a long wait to give effect to the Road Traffic Act 2004, Act 683 while translating some critical policy issues into law. Consistent with our corporate practice, the Commission conducted among others a study to determine “the baseline level for Driving under the Influence Alcohol’ that found among others that “8.7% of sampled drivers had detectable alcohol in their breaths”. Provisional statistics available to the Commission indicates that as of November ending, 13,535 crashes have been recorded resulting into 2,069 deaths as against 2119 recorded in 2011. However, Ashanti (the 2nd most crash-prone region for years) and Northern Regions have recorded very significant reductions of 32% and 42% as at end of September this year. The impending Christmas and New Year festivities come with their own safety challenges due to increase in mobility and fun fare. In view of this the NRSC has directed that all its regional offices should liaise with its stakeholders to intensify its outreach activities focusing on the use of crash helmets, passenger and pedestrian safety and also deploy the enforcement task force to police incidence of speeding, drink driving and driver fatigue among others. Ing. Noble John Appiah, Executive Director of the NRSC says “to us enforcement starts with the operators and this week we shall embark on some monitoring to ascertain the readiness of the transport operators and their compliance with published operational guidelines. At the end of the exercise we will be in a position to share with the public which operators are safe for patronage”. It is our expectation that, the public will support these efforts in order to end the year safely for our collective good. Merry Christmas and a safe 2013. -SGD- Kwame Koduah Atuahene Esq. Head, Communications