NGO installs 30km/h speed limit signs for Accra schools

Amend, an advocacy Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), in partnership with the FIA and Puma Energy foundations, has installed 30-kilometre (km) per hour speed limit signs for nine basic schools within Accra.

Beneficiary schools include the Kaneshie Cluster of Schools and Reverend Thomas Clegg Methodist School in Accra, which had signs directing drivers to go a maximum of 30 km per hour on the Nii Asere Ayitey Road, mainly used by the pupils.

The NGO also educated the school children on how to cross roads safely. Mrs Amma Oduro-Dankwah, the Country Manager of Amend, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said crashes on that road had resulted in injuries and sometimes death of children age five years and above.

She said there was a 90 per cent chance of pedestrian survival in the event of a collision involving a vehicle travelling at 30km/h, as compared to higher speeds.

“For instance, at a vehicle speed of 40km/h, there is a 70 per cent chance of pedestrian survival, thus 30 per cent chance of death, while at 50 km/h, the chance of survival reduces to only 15 per cent with 85 per cent chance of death,” she explained. According to the Ghana Road Traffic Regulations (L.I.2180), “Except otherwise indicated by the Road Authority, a person driving a motor vehicle shall not exceed a maximum permissible speed limit of thirty kilometres per hour on a road within a school”. The installation of road signs, she said, would serve as a reminder to drivers to slow down as they approached the school zones.

Mrs Oduro-Dankwah said it was as a result of road accidents involving school children that Amend, since 2016, had been working to reduce speeds and provide safe pedestrian infrastructure such as footpaths, zebra crossings, speed humps, and road signs around high-risk basic schools in Accra.

Amend, she said, was also advocating for the installation of 30km/h speed limit signs around schools throughout the country.

Mr Osei Kufuor, the Coordinator of the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Roads Safety (BIGRS), and a Representative of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, said they had gathered data on road crashes in Accra as well as accident prone areas to take safety measures to control them.

He said it was part of the measures to reduce pedestrian accidents that the AMA introduced the Pedestrian Road Safety Action Plan in 2017 to protect pedestrians from crashes.

Mr Kufuor said the AMA was introducing its engineers to best practices of building roads to make pedestrians, especially Persons with Disability, safe on the roads.

He disclosed that the Assembly was embarking on preparing a Speed Management Plan, this year, because it had identified how speeding caused more than half of the deaths recorded on roads.

Apart from speeding, he said they were going to look at controlling drink driving, driving without seatbelts and riding motors without helmets.