Avoidable tragedy

 Editorial

In yet another chapter of the nation’s harvest of recurring but avoidable deaths, two persons reportedly died and six others injured last Monday, after a train hit a commercial bus and a Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) in Lagos.

The bus, said to be carrying six passengers, and the SUV which had two occupants, reportedly veered into the rail track at the PWD section of the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway in what eye-witnesses reported as frantic bid on their part to beat traffic congestion. While dragging the SUV along the track, the train, as if to complete the cycle of avoidable tragedy, reportedly hit another vehicle, parked on the tracks at the Bolade end of the popular Oshodi market. The owner of the car, who, according to reports, was not inside, had raced to save his young son who was left sleeping in the car only to be crushed by the fast-moving train.

Such avoidable accidents, particularly along the corridor have, sadly, become the norm rather than exception. As it is, no year goes without one terrible incident or the other occurring along the rail tracks. For instance, a similar incident in July 2018 saw a train ram into the mini-bus popularly called Danfo, said to have got in its way, killing at least nine persons. And certainly, Nigerians will not forget the case of a youth corps member, Nneka Odili, crushed to death as she attempted to walk across the rail track with her headphones on in March, that year.

It is sadly the case that many motorists, particularly in Lagos, think little of their personal safety, let alone that of other commuters in their daily exhibition of impunity. In this, the commercial drivers appear to be the most notorious. When not dropping passengers at places not so designated, they are in their impatience often seen brazenly flouting basic traffic rules and regulations designed to keep the flow of traffic.

All of these however is nothing compared with death-wishes which often happen when motorists consider it beneath them to wait for an on-coming train at the level crossings. Even when there are clear signs of on-coming trains, some motorists would still dare to defy the railway personnel deployed to restrict them to both sides of the tracks until the trains pass.

Such brazen acts of indiscipline, unfortunately, are not restricted to motorists alone. They are also seen among traders who openly exhibit their wares on rail tracks, with no consideration of their own safety.

In all of these, the chief culprit is of course the railway authorities. With each passing day comes the news of railway modernisation even when little is being done to truly prepare the sector for modernism in any appreciable sense. Today, the so-called inter-city railways are not only over-crowded, chaos actually reigns with many of the passengers hanging on the roofs of the trains, and officials doing nothing to address the problem. As for the tracks, gone are the days – it would appear – when railway crossings are not only clearly marked but gated to prevent such incidents. Indeed, the overall sense that one gets is an organisation, which although claims to have invested heavily in modernising, is yet to come to terms with the need to focus on the human infrastructure components of its modernisation.

We do agree that motorists have the obligation to respect the rules on railway level crossings. But then, so do the railway authorities have a more onerous duty to secure the tracks and put in place the mechanisms to keep such incidents at bay. We expect, in so far as this is possible, for the railway authorities not only to fence off the tracks to prevent access by roving traders, but to ensure that physical barriers are in place at all level crossings.

This is even more imperative now that the organisation seeks to transit to the standard gauge tracks, with speeds expected to surpass those on the existing narrow track.