The National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) is expressed about the increase in road accident deaths as elections approach.

Despite a decrease in the overall number of road crashes, deaths have surged by 151 in the first half of 2024, marking a nearly 14 percent increase.

This equates to an average of seven fatalities per day in Ghana.

• Read more: 14,135 road crashes recorded in 2023, resulting in 2,276 deaths – MTTD

Head of Regulation, Inspection, and Compliance at the NSRA, Kwame Koduah Atuahene, has raised concerns over law enforcement and low police visibility on roads. 

“At the turn of 2024, there is an up surge in some of the areas. Ashanti in particular. Ashanti has over taken Greater Accra and Eastern as the Region with most fatalities. In every election year, the trend over there is that, there is often the increase as compared to the preceding year. We are unable to say that they are politically related crashes. In Ashanti in particular, I think there it has to do with enforcement. The general visibility issues is not related to just Ashanti region.”

The Ashanti region is presently leading with the most accident fatalities.

Head of the Building and Road Research Institute at the CSIR, Dr William Ackaah attributed the high number of fatalities in Ashanti to its extensive network of trunk roads.

The NRSA has called for an urgent audit of street lighting nationwide, following alarming statistics that reveal 1,237 lives were lost to road crashes between January and June 2024, largely due to poor road illumination.

However, the government has promised to advance Phase 3 of its streetlight project.

Regional Minister, Titus Glover, announced plans to install 250,000 streetlights, building on previous phases which saw 10,000 lights installed in 2022 and 20,000 in 2023.

“In phase one, 10,000 streetlights was distributed in 2022.  20,000 in 2023 and in phase 3 we are going to do 250,000 and there is process in place where a company wants to partner the regional coordinating council to do a solar one on the Tema motorway then we would do a pilot from Shiashie to airport, 37 to Accra Central, “ he said.