8 pedestrians get knocked down daily, two die every day – Road Safety stats shows

At least eight people suffer various degrees of injuries from pedestrian knock-downs on Ghana’s roads, data from National Road Safety Authority.

Two die daily from such knock downs, the data collected from January to October 2019 reveal.

A total of 605 died in 10 months, the data collection duration. The number of deaths is 21 less than the figure record in 2018 within the same period.

The NRSA 2019 data also 1, 813 pedestrians sustained various degrees of injuries.

In total, 2,418 pedestrians were knocked down from January to October 2019 resulting in either injuries or death.

Within the same period in 2018, about 2,602 were knocked downs.

Rankings

In the regional breakdown, the Greater Accra Region came tops with highest number of pedestrian knock downs.

The region recorded 829 knock downs with the highest recorded in Tesano.

Ashanti region came second with 616 knock downs while the Eastern Region followed with 262.

Road campaign

The National Road Safety Authority has over the years embarked on annual road safety campaigns aimed at reducing the number of road accidents.

These exercises are introduced each year ahead of the Christmas festivities.

The 2019 campaign has been dubbed ‘Stop Road Accidents Now Before It Stops You’.

Director-General of the Authority, May Obiri Yeboah, explained the 2019 campaign.

“The intent of this campaign is to heighten sensitization for safer use of the road by all categories of road users before, during and after the Christmas and New Year festivities.

“We must resolve to use the roads wisely so that we do not visit needless tragedies upon ourselves,” she said.

She further called for a change in attitude of all road users explaining this is the only way to reduce road accidents drastically.

“This is a wake-up call to all of us… We have a shared responsibility to ensure an accident free Christmas and New Year Celebrations and this requires that we must bear a behavioral change towards our safety on the roads” she stressed.