APA – Lagos (Nigeria)
The Corps Marshal of Nigeria’s Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Mr. Dauda Biu, has said that 1,441 passengers lost their lives in road accidents in Nigeria between January and March 2023.
Biu told journalists in Abuja on Tuesday that the victims were killed in 2,733 crashes, while 8,339 others sustained injuries.
“The most worrisome part is that more than 89 percent of the crashes were speed-induced.
“In Nigeria, the picture is not different from global experience as speed emerges the highest contributory factor of road crashes, injuries, and deaths,” he said.
According to him, this development led the FRSC to begin to search for a lasting solution, having observed that behavioural and attitudinal change methods alone cannot bring the desired result.
“Today, we are complying with the United Nations Decade of Action (2021-2030) on approach to road safety, particularly as it relates to safer vehicles.
“It is assured that if we have good mobility through design and manufacturing of vehicles, crashes will reduce on our roads,’’ he said.
Biu said that fatalities from road crashes had engendered global action and campaigns for mitigation and that the strategy now was to apply technology.
He explained that it was cost-effective and adoptable with capacity to regulate speed to national thresholds.
This, according to him, has brought about speed-limiting device installation in vehicles.
Biu lamented that attempts made in the past to enforce the policy on the installation of speed-limiting devices in commercial vehicles witnessed several postponements.
He disclosed that despite the approval granted on April 1, 2016, only 173,573 vehicles had been installed with speed limiter and that a large number of registered vehicles in Nigeria are yet to comply with this directive.
“The FRSC has proposed the development and implementation of pre-fitted, speed-limiting device for all vehicles assembled in Nigeria and those imported into the country,’’ local media reports on Wednesday quoted Biu as saying.
GIK/APA
