Fatigue driving, speeding main contributors to road crashes – NRSA

The National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) says after a 12-year investigation, it has found out that road crashes are mostly caused by fatigue driving and speeding.

The investigation was conducted into 19 major crashes on some highways in the country that had claimed 345 deaths.

This was revealed during a meeting with transport heads of commercial transport operators on compliance audit reports and presentation of road crashes investigation findings.

“47 per cent of the drivers were sleeping momentarily as a result of fatigue driving, 37 per cent were involved in wrongful overtaking and faulty manoeuvres whilst speeding,” the findings revealed.

” 12 per cent of the crashes were due to speeding and loss of control and 4 per cent was due to road environment,” the investigations revealed.

Some of the memorable accidents are the Dawa accident that claimed 20 lives in 2010, the Kintampo Waterfall head-on-collision that claimed 63 lives in 2016 and Kintampo Amoma Nkwanta where two buses collided, and one got burnt, resulting in 60 deaths in 2019.

The Dompoase accident in 2020 claimed 34 lives, the Akumadan accident in 2021 with six deaths and the Asuboi accident where a bus crashed into a fallen container claimed 11 lives amongst others were investigated.

Whilst 15 out of 19 crashes (79 per cent) had occurred at night between 8:00 am and 05:00 pm, 14 out of 19 crashes (74 per cent) were head-on-collision and partial sideswipes.

Also, 14 out of 19 (74 per cent) of the incidences occurred when at-fault drivers veered off their lane and crossed over onto the other lane led to a collision.

The findings also indicated that 14 out of the 38 (37 per cent) drivers involved in the 19 investigated crashes survived.

It was revealed that 42 per cent of the crashes occurred on the N10 highway which begins at Kumasi and travels north to Burkina Faso and 26 per cent happened on N6 highway which also starts from Accra through Nkawkaw to Kumasi.

Whereas 21 per cent occurred on the Takoradi-Accra section of N1 highway, 11 per cent occurred on the Tema-Aflao section of the N1 highway.

“79 per cent of the investigated crashes occured in the Eastern, Ashanti, Bono and Central Regions whilst the 21 per cent occurred in the Savannah, Volta and Great Accra Regions,” the findings revealed.

The NRSA had therefore called for a national policy on night driving and a national campaign on fatigue driving, wrongful overtaking and speeding.

It also demanded swift action of strictly regulating operations of the transport industry where standards and systems such as co-driving or relay driving system, speeding, driving hours, mandatory stops, journey planning, tracking system and seatbelt usage would be in place.

The Authority also called for the dualisation of highways as a long-term solution with partial dualisation as a short-term measure.