On 29th December 2017, marked the sad end of National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) on manning the roads at specified points when the head of state President Uhuru Kenyatta directed that police should assume their roles on the roads.
NTSA had been conceived and delivered in 2012 to replace the police on the roads, and they just had one major role do to, reduce road carnage and loss of more lives on our roads.
But under their watch, more lives have been lost just like before, in 2016 alone, more than 3000 Kenyans lost their lives on roads, and the statistics are said to go to troposphere in 2017 report that is yet to be released.
Again in December 2017, under their stringent rules and watch, more than 300 lives have been lost on the roads, the highest ever recorded statistics on our roads in a single month.
The sad and most unfortunate point to note is the fact that NTSA, meant to guard the roads and ensure its safety, have been part of accident casing agents and traffic law breakers.
At Sachagwaan blackspot located along Nakuru-Eldoret, NTSA officers chasing a truck caused the loss of 26 lives in December 2017.
As if that is not enough, NTSA law enforcers have been captured on camera by concerned citizens breaking traffic laws like driving on the wrong side of the roads, overtaking where it is prohibited thus endangering their lives and those of other road users.
And just like their police counterparts, NTSA officers have taken bribes from drunk motorists, traffic offenders and drivers who evade courts have always grissed the hands of NTSA officers.
The very problems we had before the coming of NTSA while with police officers in 2012, are the very same problems we still battling with today.
It is the same forest with different monkeys, thus President Uhuru’s knee-jerk directive is like going around the mountain and not solving the problems we are facing on the roads.
To end road carnage and improve safety of road users, we need to work from pragmatic ideas. But not coming up with more rules and regulations as with have seen the case with the reign of police officers and NTSA.
Take for instance, one of the NTSA report has indicated some of the problems that resulted to road accidents for their 5 years era, and one of the major ones have been bad road design, drunk driving, lack of support from county governments, poor funding among others.
These problems sways in all the stakeholders involved to join hands and work hand-in-hand.
Working from what is known to what is not known, would be a good broad intervention considering the fact that the accidents are caused by multiplicity of factors.
The government should work to ensure that the problems and challenges highlighted in the NTSA reports are well looked into with clear understanding and analyzing of the data.
The issue also calls for a strong and coherent political move, and the first would be to ensure no more lives are lost at black spots such as Sachagwaan and Salgaa.
The measures taken to cub horrific accidents at these blackspots would then prove sense to apply them elsewhere on a broad spectrum.
