How road accidents claimed 4,387 lives in 6 months – FRSC

The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) says a total of 4,387 people were killed as a result of road traffic crashes from January to June across the 36 states and the FCT.

The Corps Public Education Officer, Assistant Corps Marshal, Mr Bisi Kazeem, said this in an interview on Sunday in Abuja.

“From January to June, a total of 4,387 people were killed as a result of road traffic crashes. The Corps also recorded 14,108 injuries from the crashes within the same period.

“These crashes occured as a result of night trips, fatigue, route violation, dangerous overtaking, use of worn out/expired tyres and speeding.

“And you know our men do not operate at night, as such these drivers take advantage of our absence on the road at night to violate established traffic regulations,” he said.

Kazeem said one of the key reasons for those crashes was that most of them were manned by untrained or partially trained and inexperienced drivers.

This, he said, was discovered through painstaking investigation and research.

“Before now, the key issue was their inability to meet basic safety standards.

“This necessitated the establishment of commands in Tank Farms to ensure that before any tanker loads inflammable products, it must meet the maximum safety standards.

“At the moment, we can say to a reasonable extent that the compliance level, particularly that of mandatory installation of speed limit devices though not 100 per cent is quite impressive,” he said.

He explained that the campaign was still on and special patrol operations were organised within intervals to make massive impoundment of vehicles whose owners did not comply.

“We still issue notice of offence ticket to them and in most cases compel them to get them fixed,” he said.

Kazeem also said the Corps recorded 14,108 injuries from the crashes and rescued 15,789 persons unhurt in road traffic crashes within the same period.

He said there was no rise in road crashes involving trucks and tankers, rather there was a decline.

He, however, said the corps recorded a slight rise in fatalities where a reasonable number of people were killed in a few crashes.

According to Kazeem, the Corps recorded a total of 4,691 road crashes from January to June.

To reduce fatalities on the roads, the FRSC boss said the corps was engaging truck owners on the need to have a functional onboard camera for round the clock monitoring of the activities of drivers.

He added that the Corps had also deepened engagement on the installation of safety valves in tankers to eliminate all incidences of spillage in the event of a crash.