In 2016, The National Road and Safety Commission (NRSC) reported that more than 2,000 people died in car-related accidents.

To reduce those numbers, Kwame Koduah Atuahene, Head of Communication at the National Road Safety Commission said that he is adamant on informing the public of the dangers of reckless driving.  

“Safety is the number one concern and it depends on us,” he told Daniel Dadzie on the Super Morning Show Thursday. “We need to make a personal commitment to be disciplined and be aware of the risks.”

 Kwame Koduah Atuahene, Head of Communication at the National Road Safety Commission

Earlier this year, Joy News was invited to attend the funeral of Priscilla and her two-year-old son, Jaydon. They both died instantly in the hands of a reckless driver, whose car severely injured and killed the mother and her child on the scene.

The accident is one of many that could have been avoided, and it has raised the interest of road safety advocates who say enough is enough.

Last week, Dr. Godfred Akyea-Daarkwah, Chief Executive of the Road Safety and Transportation Consultancies Ltd. told Joy FM that reckless drivers are mostly to blame.

“The main source of this is human,” Akyea-Daarkwah said. “It has become an attitude, and we need to start arresting the source.”

Read more: Passengers urged to speak out when drivers over speed

Through Akyea-Daarkwah’s research, he found that drunk driving, driving while fatigued, over speeding, overloading of vehicles, poorly-designed roads and poor vehicle maintenance are mostly to blame for road accidents.

A newer problem is technology. Some drivers have attention disorder, where they multitask on WhatsApp and other social media platforms while driving, he said.

A deadly accident in Kintampo that claimed more than 60 lives.

On the NRSC’s website, it states that part of their key function is to “undertake nationwide road safety education, information and publicity, carry out special projects for the improvement of road safety and coordinate, monitor and evaluate road safety activities, programmes and strategies.”

But Akyea-Daarkwah refutes those claims. He said that in 2015 the government of Ghana called on him and his team to train 40,000 commercial drivers on how to operate a vehicle properly. The training reduced the number of accidents that year, but those figures swelled again in following years because the training was not maintained.

Training must be continuous and intensive to truly reduce car accidents, he advocated, and continued that his efforts to enforce training have worked.

Atuahene has emphasized that “gaps from within will be addressed for the larger public” to further educate and train people on the dangers of reckless driving.