End carnage on our roads

The Tamale and the Masu accidents may, therefore, be a forewarning to the nation in respect of looming carnage on our roads as the December 7 elections and the Yuletide approach.

We find it even more worrying the comments made by the Executive Director of the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), Mr Noble Appiah, to the effect that the recent spate of fatal road accidents was attributable to institutional and systemic failure.

According to him, stakeholders charged with the responsibility of addressing the carnage on the roads had failed to implement the necessary framework to stem the tide of increasing road accidents (see page 3 of the Daily Graphic of Saturday, November 24, 2012).

We find it unfortunate that institutions mandated to implement policies and effectively enforce laws to help reduce road accidents are not living up to their responsibilities, as families and the nation keep losing their loved ones and human resource in fatal road accidents.

While calling on such institutions to rise up to the task, the DAILY GRAPHIC also stresses the need to sanction individuals whose failure to act and/or negligence of duty have led to the loss of hundreds of innocent lives in road accidents.

In that respect, we call on the government to crack the whip by asking those non-performing individuals to either resign their posts or give them the sack for failing to live up to their duties.

We believe that such an action will ensure that people entrusted with the responsibility to ensure road safety will sit up and do the right thing and thereby help stem the spate of increasing accidents on our roads.

While advocating this line of action, the DAILY GRAPHIC also urges all road users to contribute towards road safety and help minimise road accidents and their attendant loss of lives by respecting traffic regulations.

As the NRSC has often trumpeted in its campaigns, road safety is a shared responsibility. Therefore, whether you are a driver, passenger, pedestrian or law enforcement officer, we all have a responsibility to ensure safety on our roads.