Thirty-nine persons in the Tema Police enclave died due to road accidents between January and March this year.

This was disclosed by Sergeant Richard Timinka of the Motor Transport and Traffic Directorate (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service.

Explaining the accident data in terms of gender, he said out of the 39 deaths recorded, four were males aged below 18-years-old, and 25 were 18-years-old and above.

Two females below 18-years-old; and 18 others who were 18-years-old and above also died.

He noted that the deaths occurred from 344 accidents involving 194 commercial vehicles and 248 private cars, and 99 motorcycles, tricycles, and bicycles.

Sgt Timinka, stated at the Ghana News Agency Tema Office and MTTD road safety campaign platform on Friday.

The Project seeks to actively create consistent and systematic weekly awareness advocacy on the need to be cautious on the road as a user, educate all road users of their respective responsibilities, and sensitize drivers especially of the tenets of road safety regulations, rules and laws.

Providing data to support the accident rate in the region, Sgt. Timinka said commercial vehicles killed 18 people, private cars killed 13 people and motorcycles/tricycles eight.

Breaking the statistics further Sgt. Timinka said 34 was classified as fatal, 154 serious and 156 minor accidents cases recorded in the first quarter of this year.

He explained that “fatal accidents are those that death occurred; serious ones were those that victims were hospitalised over 24 hours; while minor ones are those which victims spent less than 24 hours in the hospital.

The Tema Region which spans from Abattoir through to Ada, Ashaiman, Dodowa and the Shai Hills also recorded 384 injuries due to road accidents.

Touching on some of the causes of the accidents especially those of the private cars, he revealed that most drivers of such vehicles use communication devices while driving to the extent that some even engaged in phone chats while on the roads.

Sgt Timinka added that private drivers after acquiring licenses do not benefit from any refresher courses which could lead to complacency, noting that other factors included; non-maintenance of their vehicles, driver fatigue, bad nature of roads, lack of markings among others.

He observed that there was a high probability of persons getting injured in accidents involving motorcycles and tricycles as the statistics for Tema showed that 91 persons got injured during the first quarter of 2021 and 13 died through the 99 accidents that involved them.

He said another worrying trend was the killing of pedestrians as according to him nine of them were killed between January and March 2021 out of the 23 knocked down by vehicles.

He urged drivers to be responsible on the road and protect pedestrians by stopping for them to cross while cautioning pedestrians to only cross the roads at designated places and safe places to avoid endangering themselves and other users of the road.

Francis Ameyibor, Tema Regional Manager of the Ghana News Agency appealed to the media to upscale public education on road safety, stressing that, “Road safety is a shared responsibility, we must not leave anyone behind”.

He commended the MTTD Tema Command for the effort to team up with the Tema office of the Ghana News Agency to embark on the weekly public education campaign to make the roads safe for all.