Mr Anokye (middle) addressing the press conference
The Central Regional Manager of Road Safety Commission (NRSC) has disclosed that a total of 136 people died through road accidents in the region whilst 1,149 sustained various degrees of injuries in 788 reported road crashes involving 1,168 vehicles in 2016.
According to him the death toll was an increase of 6.5 percent over the 2015 figure of 128 deaths, which also witnessed 843 injuries.
He attributed the main cause of such road crashes in the region to human error comprising tyre burst, disregard for road signs and markings, fatigue driving, speeding leading to wrongful overtaking among others.
“It is especially during the last quarter of the year that drivers abuse road traffic regulations with impunity,” he added
Mr Anokye revealed this during a press conference held at Cape Coast on Tuesday.
He hinted that 20% of the accident in 2016 occurred in December and had affected the gains made so far.
Mr Anokye said most of the accident occurred in the last quarter of 2016 and the first two weeks of 2017 and his outfit had been worried.
He underscored the need for Police Administration to revert to their earlier circular and bring back the motor traffic police for their routine traffic checks on the roads.
“For their absence, drivers have taken to misbehaving recklessly on the roads thereby causing preventable crashes, without effective enforcement of road safety regulations, road safety education and publicity would be meaningless,” he stated.
The NRSC Central Regional Manager also said that most of the accident recorded in the region involved Sprinter buses and therefore advocated the implementation of speed limit especially on the Sprinter commercial buses, adding it would help monitor the speeds driven by drivers of such buses.
The Regional Commander of the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service, ASP Emmanuel Ofori hinted that his outfit was committed in collaborating with other stakeholders to bring sanity on the nation’s roads.
He appealed to drivers to take road traffic regulations seriously to avoid the unnecessary carnage on the roads promising that his outfit was determined to enforce all rules on road safety.
From Sarah Afful, Cape Coast