The will to end road carnage lacking

Mobhare Matinyi, Washington DC.   The Citizen, Tanzania.    Thursday, 04 October 2012 22:09 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
On Tuesday, Tanzanians went to sleep with the memory of three catastrophic accidents in the country that killed 13 people, injured about 99, destroyed eight vehicles, devastated numerous families, and caused a big loss to private businesses and the nation. However, it was one of many bad days that will change nothing at all.

The deadliest accident took place in Mbeya Region where ten people died on the spot, while 25 were seriously injured when four vehicles and a commuter bus crashed into each other. According to eyewitnesses the cause of the accident that ended up in an inferno, could have been a combination of brake failure and loss of control by the driver of a speeding fuel tanker.

In Shinyanga Region, a bus collided with a truck, causing the deaths of three people and seriously injuring 26 others. In one of the pictures circulated online, a courageous police officer was seen holding the remains of a human foot still inside a shoe. Eyewitnesses blame the truck driver for carelessly attempting to overtake a cyclist in front of an overly aggressive speeding bus.

Luckily, in another accident in the Tanga Region 48 passengers escaped death, but sustained injuries and lost their belongings when their bus caught fire on the highway. The cause of the fire that completely gutted the bus was not immediately known.

These three accidents happened a few days after President Jakaya Kikwete told the nation that between June 2008 and June 2012 Tanzania lost 15,499 innocent lives in thousands of road accidents, an average of 3,875 deaths a year, slightly more than twice the average annual deaths between 1980 and 2000 of about 1,346.

When he spoke during the National Road Safety Week last year, the nation’s Traffic Police Commander, Mohammed Mpinga, said that in the first six months of the year, in Mainland Tanzania alone, 12,124 accidents killed 1,764 people, an increase of 18 per cent on fatalities compared to the same period in 2010. Looking back at the year 2000 in which 1,737 people died from 14,548 road traffic accidents, frankly, there is no hope.

Consider the following; based on various data, the United States with 314 million people, more than 250 million vehicles, and more than seven million kilometres of roads including four million kilometrers of paved roads is much safer than Tanzania which has 45 million people and a fraction of everything.

According to two Tanzanian academics, Cuthbert Chiduo and Philemon Minja, who in 2001 conducted a research on the challenges of road safety in Tanzania, the chance of being killed in a road accident in Tanzania is 20 to 30 times higher than in the US. One may argue that the two countries aren’t comparable in anything, but aren’t we human beings like Americans are with beating hearts and functioning brains?

The researchers who analysed road traffic accidents between 1980 and 2000, noted: “In Tanzania road accidents go through a vicious cycle in which a fatal accident happens, condolences and cautions are issued, funerals and promises to take action follow, a short-lived flurry of activities take place, and then a lull period settles before another fatal accident occurs”. Weren’t they right?

Now, here is what irks concerned Tanzanians more than anything else: according to Commander Mpinga, who unfortunately happens to be the Executive Secretary of the National Road Safety Council (NRSC), 76 per cent of accidents in Tanzania are caused by human error, in other words they are preventable, but no one is preventing them.

Clearly, somebody is not working here. So, what are we going to do to significantly reduce the number of fatal road accidents in Tanzania? That’s the question, forget about speeches, promises, meetings, events and the like; when are we going to take care of ourselves?

Mind you, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) report published in April 2011, Tanzanian ranks 34th in the world in age adjusted death rate per 100,000 of population, which was 29,58 at the time. Sounds unbelievable?

We are not yet like Saudi Arabia, India, or Qatar which led the world in road accident fatalities in the last three years, or some African countries such as Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Niger, Nigeria, and Kenya, but the trend is dangerous; shame on us Tanzanians!

Road accidents, which rank tenth in the list of causes of death in Tanzania, are posing a serious problem, and certainly, our traditional approach of organising events and making speeches is not solving the problem. So bad! So sad! So true!

How can a traffic police commander lead a road transport safety body which is supposed to watch him in the first place? Are we serious? Can a police officer do a job that requires an implementable multi-sectoral strategy and a serious political will?