The National Road safety Commission (NRSC) has called on passengers to speak up against recalcitrant drivers who flout basic traffic laws.
This forms part of new road safety measures adopted by the NRSC to protect passengers in the country.
The call was made at a launch of a road safety campaign organized by the NRSC in collaboration with Christian Community Microfinance limited (CCML) dubbed “Be informed, observe, speak up and save lives (Boss).
According to statistics from the NRSC 520 people died in road crashes in 3,512 accidents nationwide in the first quarter of 2014.
From the statistics the Greater Accra Region recorded the highest number of accidents with 1,336, while the Upper East Region recorded the lowest with 35 cases.
[contextly_sidebar id=”y6Sgno2r2ccy8SouzEyy9JBr7rQzQV63″]Boss is a documentary that will be distributed to bus drivers plying long distance routes to be showed in their buses as part of the campaign message.
The Head of Communications for the National Road and Safety Commission, Kwame Kodua in an interview with Citi News said more than 20% of victims who suffer accident related deaths are mostly the passengers.
This he says are due to the failure of the passengers to speak up against careless driving.
“If you look at the figures, close 23% percent of persons who suffer traffic related deaths are passengers. Many a times they find themselves very timid when the conditions naturally expect that they speak up. So in March we launched a national campaign in Nkawkaw to raise the profile of the passenger,” he indicated.
He explained that the Boss campaign seeks “to tell the passenger that in a vehicle environment he is the boss so for every reason he ought to be bold and seek information, stand up to his right and speak up against all manner of misbehavior that has the tendency to put his life in danger.”
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By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana