Only 1 million persons hold driver’s license

A total of 1, 249 941 persons --- approximately 4.5 percent of Ghana’s 28 million estimated population, are qualified to drive as at May this year, statistics from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) show.

The figure is, however, 882,884 short of the 2, 132, 825 registered vehicles that are on the country’s roads.

The legal age for driving in Ghana is 18, and about close to 60 percent of the population is 18 and above.

Although a person could own more than one vehicle, and a licenced driver can cause road crashes in a reckless manner, studies blame most road crashes on rough and ready drivers who have no proper training and so are not licenced, and have no clue or have little regard for road regulations.

In the first quarter of this year alone, 708 persons died from 4,049 road accidents, the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) reported in May.

Yearly, close to about 2,000 lives are lost through vehicular related accidents. For instance, a total number of 2,198 individuals lost their lives in 2016 to vehicular road accidents.

Out of the road accidents figure, 3,983 persons sustained various degrees of injury, with 1,199 pedestrian knockdowns involving 6,468 vehicles and 1,289 motorbikes.

There are issues concerning the quality of driving schools and the sort of training they offer.

Currently, there are proposals to add driving to curriculum of Senior High Schools and tertiary institutions, as part of efforts to increase the number of qualify drivers in the country.

There are concerns, also, about the manner in which the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority conducts tests for the granting of licences, which excludes people who cannot read and write. The final test involves multiple choice questions generated on a computer database, which the applicant has to answer by marking the right answer.