Who is Ghana’s Minister for Roads, Transport? What is he doing about deaths on our roads?

Accidents can’t be eliminated from our roads but the ghastly road tragedies claiming thousands of lives each year in Ghana can be reduced, if the Minister for Roads and Transport is effective enough to repair the bad roads and implement appropriate road signs and warnings to educate the minds of drivers.

Each year thousands of passengers meet their untimely death through road accidents in Ghana, yet there haven’t been any serious prevention solutions to reduce this road menace.

Who is Ghana’s Minister for Roads and Transport? And how many people must be killed on Ghanaian roads before something is done?

According to “Statista.com,” between January and October 2020, 12,100 road accidents occurred, involving 20,400 vehicles. The accidents claimed 2,080 lives and injured 12,380. “Statista.com,” also revealed that in the year 2016, more males were involved in road accidents than females.

God only knows the trauma and psychological impact these victims may have experienced, taking into consideration the fragile medical system and poor health insurance in Ghana.

When it comes to the issues of improving the quality of life of Ghanaians, the government will never do it; instead, they will put the money into their pockets. Corruption has affected every infrastructure in the country.

Bad roads and unnecessary speeding are often the causes of road accidents but in Ghana, there are more serious issues attributing to deaths on our roads.

In African countries, including Ghana, since the maintenance of road safety to European or modern standards involves financial matters; no government is willing to invest money into such costly projects. The result is deaths on our roads today in Ghana.

The driving license unit in Accra is the only recognized institution that conducts thorough examination on vehicles, for example, the lights, indicators, headlights, and backlights before the roadworthy certificate is issued but one of the most important things, which is the adjustment of headlights to the right level is not an important issue.

Many European drivers fail a vehicle examination or control test because of poor adjustment of headlights. Since the headlights are not adjusted to the right level, it creates difficulties for other motorists.

Badly adjusted headlights shine directly into the eyes of the oncoming traffic, causing partial blindness which often leads to several road accidents in Ghana.

Driving in Ghana at night or traveling at night is very dangerous because one cannot see far and foresee changes in situations. When a vehicle, such as a tipper truck or timber trailer breaks down in the middle of the road at night it's very difficult to see it. Such situations often cause serious road accidents.

Part of this article is an excerpt of a previous article I wrote about deaths on Ghanaian roads, under the caption “Why night driving in Ghana is often dangerous. Reference: https://juskosave.blogspot.com/2019/02/why-night-driving-in-ghana-is-often.html

Apart from street projects without lights on Ghanaian roads, there are not enough warning signs and signals on Ghanaian roads. Yes, Ghana needs an appropriate road signs plan for the entire country if the government really cares about the number of people meeting their untimely death on our roads.

Drivers don’t even know that when approaching a school zone or places where there are activities of people such as markets, the speed limit must go down. They kill human beings instead of killing their speed.

In almost every developed country, there are speed bumps at places people live or children play to reduce the speed of drivers when at such places, there are speed bumps in Ghana to regulate the speed of drivers.

Ghanaian drivers make overtaking in sharp curves and can do 100 kilometers on roads that require 50 kilometers speed.

Once in one of my articles published on ModernGhana, I suggested: “Over-speed cameras” that have been one of the effective measures to reduce road accidents and the generating tax in developed countries, be introduced in Ghana.

Even though I am aware that drivers’ fines could be in someone’s pocket, since the Ghana government always seeks possible avenues to steal, the heavy fines to over speed offenders could reduce road accidents in the country.

Public road safety is the priority of every government in the developed world; therefore, it should be the same in Ghana. Ghanaians don’t have to beg for road safety.

The Minister for Roads and Transport, I hope you are reading this article. Ghana is not a poor country; corruption must come to an end to improve the life of the suffering masses.

We are sick and tired of writing thousands of these articles each year but since nothing significant is done, the death toll on Ghanaian roads keeps rising.