Children and road safety

It was only a few months ago that a celebrity (by Ghanaian standards) was reported to have crashed into another vehicle, resulting in the demise of a three-year-old boy who was enjoying a father-son ride happily.

The bubbly life of a child was cut short in an incident that was preventable and in actual fact should never happen again. Before this incident, a six-year-old girl and her two-year-old brother sustained head injuries when they were crashed by the roadside by another Ghanaian celebrity.

These are only two of such stories that made it to the headlines, attracting Ghanaian sympathy because of the personalities involved. What about the many other innocent children who were injured and killed but whose stories did not make the news headlines?

Globally, 1.19 million people die each year from road traffic crashes. Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged five to 29 years, according to data from the World Health Organisation (WHO), ahead of all the diseases we can even think about.

Low and middle-income countries possess 60 per cent of the cars in the world, and these countries account for 92 per cent of the fatalities that occur on the roads, sadly.

The highest death rates occur in Africa. About half of all these global deaths due to road traffic accidents occur among vulnerable road users and persons of low socioeconomic status.

Important

It is important to recognise that road traffic accidents result in significant economic losses to individuals, families and nations. That is why it has become an important ambitious global target by the UN General Assembly to halve the global number of deaths and injuries by 2030.

The cost of treatment of the injured and loss of productivity of those killed or disabled by their injuries, and for family members who need to take time off work or school to care for the injured, can amount to about three per cent of a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).

This amount is colossal, considering that many low and middle-income countries have not yet succeeded in committing even one per cent of their nation’s GDP to their health sector alone.

Protected

Children should be protected through stringent measures on our roads. It has been 20 years since the pas­sage of the Road Traffic Act, 2004 (Act 683), and the Road Traffic Regulation Legislative Instrument 2012 (LI) 2180, which seeks to protect all citizens by making seatbelts compulsory. It is obvious that enforcement has been a challenge.

It should, however, be a non-negotiable requirement that children travelling in vehicles be secured in a safe child restraint system or child car seat if they are under 10 years of age or below 135 cm in height.

It is also preferable that they sit in the back seat of vehicles since the rear seats are the safest place to be in a crash.

It is worrying to see children packed like sardines in school buses and taxis with no precautions. Without much supervision, some even stick their heads out of the vehicles. This lawlessness must be curbed.

Motorists

Very rarely do motorcyclists care about the safety of children on motorbikes. Even if they care about helmets, sizes that fit children may not be readily available. Tricycle drivers and motorcyclists seem to be above the law when they arrive at traffic lights.

The roads we ply on have also been so deplorable in recent times. Efforts by drivers to dodge potholes also contribute to the recklessness. Motorcyclists veering through streets like no one’s business, poor road markings, absence of street lights and non-functional traffic lights are all issues that must be addressed to reduce the carnage.

The writer is a Child Development Expert/ Fellow at Zero-to-three Academy, USA.
E-mail: nanaesi_19@yahoo.co.uk