We are all mad people on Ghana’s roads; driving, walking, commuting or policing.

Feel free to take yourself out of the bracket. To be defensive is as human as finger-pointing. But our higer self should and wants to embrace the reality that we are all mad about the way we transport ourselves.

I bet you’re wondering, what is this mad woman babbling about?

Well I am talking about a topic which has been next to ignored completely in Ghana, by the media, public health officers, road contractors, engineers, law enforcers, presidents… ignored by Ghanaians.

 ROAD SAFETY

Reporting on road safety can be frustrating. News makers think it’s not news, it’s not compelling or whatever the justifications given for stories on road safety making almost never making it on the airwaves. How can human lives not be news or compelling?

Imagine that?

And just when there has been a horrific accident with massive loss of lives we suddenly grow some consciousness or better yet a conscience. An “aha” moment! Road safety will cease to be news within the same speed the accident happened. Yet politicians are given so much of expensive airtime to spew all kinds of baloney, trade insults, and display impunity with so much bravado.

Unbelievable! How we only react after the facts!! 

It’s not just the media that seems to be so preoccupied with everything else apart from how to ensure we don’t needlessly kill ourselves on the road.

For most ordinary folks the lack of interest in safety on the road could be due to lack of knowledge, indifference, desperation for survival, poverty, indiscipline and impunity.

You’d be amazed that people have no clue what jay walking is. People don’t understand traffic lights (they could be colour blind), road signs. Why would they bother about a zebra crossing when they are struggling to make ends meet. So what do we see? Hawking, ‘maniac’ drivers, pedestrians who cross the road casually and without any sense of urgency, pavements and even roads turned into homes or shops. However we fail to understand that road safety is also a basic need not just food and a bed.

Each individual has a personal responsibility for his or her own safety.

Reality check! Road traffic crashes are a leading cause of mortality. They are predictable and preventable, yet kill more people globally, especially in low and middle income countries which have seen an increase in motorization. Ironically these low and middle income countries fail to acknowledge and ensure road traffic safety from scratch. Just look at our roads?

Can we even call them roads? In Ghana there are roads that are poorly constructed and those that…lets just say are sand pathways. What do you see in major and minor towns?

 Apart from terrible and crazy divers(licensed or not), as well as police officers harassing drivers or extorting money from them- the roads have broken edges, they have undulating surfaces with uncountable bumps or potholes, unnecessary and illegal ramps often made from cement block by residents who are frustrated with the dust from the road, faded zebra crossing which no one respects, areas around roads turned mini football fields with the balls every now and then rolling unto the road with traffic, roads turned into car parks, living rooms, boys quarters, pubs & restaurants,…the examples are never-ending.

The attitudes of road users in Ghana coupled with the poorly constructed roads can be a death wish. Annually about 2000 people are reported to have died on the roads by the National Road safety Commission. However this appears to be contested by the WHO which estimates  about 6000 deaths per annum instead. Estimated death rate per 100,000 population is 2.62 - World Health Organisation.  Even worse is that 42% of the deaths constituting pedestrians.

People are not just killed on the road; the loss of life, the ripple effect is the economic burden. Ghana loses 1.6 % GDP every year through road carnage.

With all of this information it is amazing how we fall into sudden amnesia the moment we get on the road.

I was in Brazil in November for the second high level conference on road safety organized by the WHO and the Brazilian government.  Travelling through the financial center Sao Paolo and the capital Brasilia I was impressed with the proper planning, modern architecture, the impressive infrastructure of the cities.

 I fell in love with the beautifully and well constructed six lane-road on which we drove to the conference center. That reminded me Finance minister Seth Terkper’s budget presentation which the government is promising to convert Ghana’s Tema motorway to six lanes. I sincerely hope to see that happen.

The conference brought ministers, ambassadors, NGOs from all over the world together to asses targets set five years ago to ensure deaths on the roads are significantly reduced. The UN General Assembly established the Decade of Action (2011-2020) which provided a global road map to make roads safer, through road safety management, safer roads and mobility, safer vehicles, and improved post crash response and hospital care.

The road safety conference opened with a dramatic speech by Zoleka Mandela, the granddaughter of Neslon Mandela-South Africa’s first president . Zoleka became a road safety activist after her daughter Zenani was killed in a car crash on her way home from a world cup concert in Soweto, 5 years ago. In tears from the pain of having to recount her ordeal, she said “road safety is a global epidemic the world unfortunately continues to ignore.”

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan who also addressed the conference said the price we pay for not ensuring safer roads is high. The lives, the money, the time lost to managing and dealing with road carnage and its corollary. The contributions to the global conference were telling, the achievements, strategies, results, failures.

What have we done as a country to ensure fewer people die on our roads? The National Road Safety Commission NRSC keeps educating drivers and pedestrians. When shall all this education affect our attitudes? Are we even interested? Is there the political will to ensure safer roads?  Politicians just make promises of building roads in return for votes. Oh and do we vote for them, as a sign of our appreciation that they did what ought to be done anyway.  South Africa’s transport minister Dipuo Peters said this at the conference, ‘road safety doesn't deliver votes but it is voters who die’. This statement has since playing back in my head.

Wow! What is wrong with us? Why do we not care about road safety? How much of the national budget is allocated to road safety? How much impact does the NRSC make when it is cash trapped?

How much of the national discourse is influenced by road safety? How much do you and I care about road safety? Road safety is a fundamental human right. We must be mad for letting this happen! For letting people die like this!

Something definitely must be wrong with us.

So tell me are we not mad?