Counties urged to form road safety committees

Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i has petitioned governors to constitute and operationalize county road safety committees to boost the national government’s e­fforts to curb road carnage and promote road safety.

Matiang’i said that although the national government through the National Transport and Safety Authority, (NTSA) had conducted a series of road safety training workshops in the counties, most of them were yet to constitute the crucial committees.

“Governors need to form the safety committees to deal with transport issues at the county level to ease national government’s work,” he said at NTSA headquarters when he presided over the flagging o­ff of ambulances to be used in post crashes management in counties.

He said the committees are crucial for the co-ordination of road safety activities in addressing the problem of illegal public service vehicle (PSV) operators.

The CS divulged that the transport stakeholders were already on track to implementing the traffic rules but called for more e­ orts to reduce deaths occasioned by carelessness on roads to a bare minimum. “There are clearly spelled out frameworks that outline traffic regulations on road safety, what we need as a country is honesty and total commitment to implement the rules,” he added.

Matiang’i called on players in the transport sector to play their rightful roles in ensuring full compliance of the traffic laws decrying that road users’ negligence and failure by some law enforcers had led to increased number of road accidents that continued to claim many lives across the country.

“We shall be having monthly consultative meetings to assess the state of road safety and draw relevant recommendations to improve safety, I welcome all players in the transport sector to come on board and contribute in this course” he added.

He said the government had deregistered 51 percent of driving schools that failed the recent revalidation exercise that sought to establish their levels of compliance with the provisions and requirements for driving school registration.

Matiang’i further said the government will collaborate with the NTSA and other relevant agencies to administer a raft of measures such as tightening training and competency testing on public service vehicle drivers in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVETs) and ensuring that all cars have e-stickers, third licenses through the Transport Integrated Management System (TIMS), for accurate and timely vehicle ownership identification and improving efficiency in inspection.

“We will now leverage on technology to expedite the realization of a future free of deaths and injuries on our roads by easily identifying violators from the command centre.”

Further, he said that weighbridges will no longer require vehicles to stop but will instead scan and take details remotely as they pass through the physical locations. NTSA board chairman Jackson Waweru revealed that most road accidents were caused by reckless driving mostly by the young people aged 18-34 years of age who own private vehicles.

They accounted for 21 percent of total accidents in the 2018/2019. “In the financial year 2018/2019, road crashes remain a leading cause of deaths, injuries and disabilities. At least 17 crashes occur every day, during which nine people lose their lives while others are injured,” he said.