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Tag: ember months

  • Ember months: Mixed expectations as FRSC begins speed limiter enforcement

    Ember months: Mixed expectations as FRSC begins speed limiter enforcement

    As the enforcement of the speed limiter policy by the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) begins today, stakeholders believe the success of this initiative to reduce accident rate lies in the hands of the safety regulator as unavailability of the device and soft enforcement might be the killing punch, writes ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE

    For the nation’s chief road safety officer Boboye Oyeyemi, the ‘Ember months promise to be the most remarkable in the nation’s history.

    Going by his prognosis, it might witness the least accident rate record in the nation’s entire history. This, he hoped to achieve by the enforcement of the speed limiter, a device governing speed rate of reckless drivers, a novelty which he said, has come to stay in Nigeria.

    From this morning, FRSC is expected to roll out a massive enforcement on all roads across the country, to begin the first phase enforcement of the installation of the device meant to reduce the number of deaths as a result of reckless driving.

    Since he assumed duties, Oyeyemi has left no one in doubt of his commitment to the achievements of the United Nations decade of action and the Accra, Ghana declaration to reduce Road Traffic Crashes (RTC), and deaths on the nation’s roads significantly by 2020.  At several fora, he has enunciated strategic action plans to change the nation’s road profile known to the United Nations as the fourth most unsafe in the world.

    One of the strategies being deployed by the Oyeyemi-led Road Safety Corps (FRSC) was the introduction of a speed limiting device to check reckless driving, a major cause of accidents on the nation’s network of death trap roads.

    Should it succeed, Oyeyemi would have scored a bull’s eye on a scourge that has taken an incurable tone, defying successive initiatives. And to ensure its success, the take-off of its enforcement had to be moved from June 1, earlier this year, to September.

    At a forum recently, the Corps Marshall said going by the worrisome trend of accidents on the nation’s roads, there is no going back on the enforcement of the device.

    He said: “Eighty per cent of crashes and accidents last year were caused by over-speeding and attendant loss of control by drivers. Research has shown that at a speed of 100 km per hour, a vehicle is moving at 28 metres per second, this reduces as the speed increases and we must not forget that the total width of our roads is 12 metres. If any driver driving at a very high speed suddenly encounters a challenge on the road, his instinct would be to swerve, but such act is inhibited by the narrow width he had to contend with, this would lead to loss of control, making the last obvious option inevitable. It is much easier to control the wheel if the driver is able to control his speed than when he is over-speeding and that is why we believed that with the coming of the device, the commission would be able to checkmate drivers’ recklessness, and non-compliance to speed control regulation.”

     

    How prepared are we?

     

    Though its enforcement was  expected to have begun in June, its postponement has become a blessing in disguise. This is because the political heat at the time took its toll on the importation of the device in such a scale that could ensure its market availability, and the seeming tardiness of the enforcers in handling the device.

    The deadline’s shift, therefore, it was learnt, enabled the product to be more readily available in the market, give opportunity to more technicians to learn the installation and avail appropriate training of corps’ officers on the “complicated” device as well as other packages such as the speed guns and the alcoholisers being introduced into the mix to curtail tragic accidents by the Corps.

    While the speed gun is meant to help detect speed violators, which may be further corroborated by the speed limiter that is expected to come with a speed recorder device, the alcoholiser, a breath analyser, is meant to detect drunken drivers for the purpose of pulling them off the road before they cause any accident on the road.

    Though the country subscribes to globally accepted regulations guiding permissible speed levels on all classes of roads, their breaches, in part by drivers and poor enforcement of sanctions by road safety officials have led to worrisome colossal losses to human lives and property, slurring the nation’s roads as one of the worst in the world.

    Though the Corps had been  silent, in the run down to the anticipated enforcement, with checks made during the week drawing blank about strategies being put in place to make the roads safe, Oyeyemi before now left no one in doubt that the agency would not contemplate any other shift.

    For him, simultaneous enforcement must begin with commercial vehicles, trucks and tankers across the country today. Going by the flurry of activities organised before now, the FRSC could boldly attest to its readiness, as it has galvanised at different fora the support of critical stakeholders and indications are that all critical road operators are on the same page with the agency to rid the roads of the menace, fast becoming the highest killer agent.

    Between June and now, the FRSC had taken the campaign to the door of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN), National Association of Transport Owners (NATO), the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) unit of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG) as well as independent trucks and fleet operators to join it in the move to make the roads safe for all.

    Defending why the agency singles out the commercial vehicles as the first to be tackled, Oyeyemi  said with a mini-commercial bus carrying a minimum of 10 passengers, and a midi and maxi buses going for between 24 and 47, no doubt, more casualties are being recorded daily by commercial operators than a driver crashing his vehicle.

     

    Compliance assessment

     

    An assessment of the readiness of all stakeholders for the take-off of the limiter enforcement showed that many more commercial vehicles, especially the fleet operators and trucks have complied and had the device installed on their vehicles. Big operators, such as the Ekene Dili Chukwu, The Young, ABC Transport, Cross Country, the BRT and its franchise operators, among others, have had their fleet installed with the device in compliance with the directive.

    Similar compliance are also being recorded from the PTD, which not only corralled all its members to imbibe the right road attitude while on the wheel, but has gone a step further by making its membership data available to the FRSC with an affirmation that any driver caught after the deadline driving any tanker without the limiter should be meted with appropriate sanctions.

    But one of the operators, Mr. Abdul Bamgbopa, insisted that the compliance is too far in-between, compared to anticipated compliance rate when the enforcement was shifted in June.

    Asked to give a rating to the level of compliance as the country prepares for a new phase in safe driving, Bamgbopa, Managing Director of Sattrak Telematics, a speed limiter pioneer and the agency’s first major collaborator, told The Nation that the rate is still low.

    “Most of the commercial vehicle operators are kind of sizing up the air to see if the FRSC will be able to enforce the initiative or not. Of course, this trend is typical of any deadline based action particularly coming from a government agency,” Bamgbopa said.

    He, however, said even if the operators had wanted to fully comply, there would have been a sharp crisis in the supply curve. “The Speed Limiting Devices (SLD) is yet to be widely available in the market largely because FRSC and Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) are yet to conclude their certification processes for companies intending to engage in the SLD business.

    Then he gave the punch which might define the agency’s success: “Without appropriate and uncompromising enforcement by the FRSC, demand will continue to be soft and far in-between.”

    Bamgbopa is not alone in conjecturing a low success rate in event of poor implementation and the seeming unprepared supply architecture.

    Similar fear were expressed by a safety expert and activist Mr Patrick Adenusi, who said the agency has the onus of proof to convince Nigerians of their commitment to the mouthing of a reduction to accident rate in the country.

    Though admitting the presence of some bottlenecks still in the processes, especially the impediments laid out by the tardiness in certification of the companies registered to run the business, he however warned the FRSC against contemplating another post-ponement which could deal a devastating blow on the initiative.

    Adenusi said: “Just as the Corps Marshall has declared, I am expecting to see the FRSC roll out men nationwide to begin the enforcement. All FRSC commands should wake up to ensure that compliance is pursued with vigour as this is the only thing that could prove to Nigerians that the agency is determined to ensure that its commitment to accident reduction goes beyond sloganeering, so that by the time we are entering into December, there would have been concrete demonstration of effects of the efficacy of the speed limiter in preventing crashes. I think all Nigerians would want to see how far this new device can go in reducing fatalities on our roads and what or how to deal with the remaining percentage if there are across the country.”

    For Adenusi, founder and Executive Director of Safety Without Borders (SWB) a non-government organisation (NGO), the agency and SON should not make the process of accreditation difficult  unnecessarily or skewed it against any operator, but ensure an open field for all serious investors.

    He said the enforcement, regardless of the status or the immediate challenges, would determine how far the initiative would go among Nigerians, adding that all eyes are on the agency to either succeed with the limiter or be dammed. Enforcement need to be total and must be sustained, he insisted.

     

    No excuses

     

    Adenusi and other experts contend that no excuse is tenable for the retention of the status quo that sees all manners of driving and all shades of recklessness on the nation’s roads.

    According to him, cost should not be an issue for speed limiter enforcement. “No cost,” he said, “is too high to be equated to the life that might be lost due to overspeeding  or as a result of the recklessness of any driver and the untold hardship that could cause to the relations of victims.”

    Citing the accident involving a 16- passenger bus on the Ondo Ore road last week, Adenusi said the accident which left all occupants of the vehicle dead is another indication that the country might indeed be getting late to put appropriate regulations in place to check reckless driving and avoidable carnage on the roads.

    “The drivers of some of these small buses are notoriously reckless. You see them overtake in bends, slopes, steep and other very dangerous terrains with scant regard to the lives they carry in their vehicles. The war against defaulters of this device must be carried to the door of the companies who own these buses and the owners should be prosecuted for non-installation of the device and any loss of lives recorded by his vehicle, while any driver caught driving such vehicle must equally be sanctioned and prosecuted for failing to comply with the regulation,” he added.

    Conclusion

     

    Adenusi said appropriate safety gospel must begin to be preached, that the anti-speed device is introduced to enhance road safety, increase value for fleet owners and operators and contribute to the reduction in human and material losses arising from accidents.

    Quoting the European Commission, Sattrak Marketing Director Adeyinka Aderemi listed the speed regulator’s many advantages to include; lower fuel consumption by about 30 per cent, lower maintenance costs (tyres, brakes, engine) and reduced insurance premiums as a result of reduction in rate of crashes.

    Other benefits are reduction of high speed accidents, less chance of expensively trained staff being lost through accidents and the reduction of vehicle downtime for unscheduled repairs, etc.

    Adeyinka  said the only adverse effect of the device is that the higher the tampering with the device after installation, the lower its speed reduction.

    He urged the vehicle owners to ensure the speed limiting devices is bought from the approved and authorised company from the NCC to avoid imitation.

     

  • Police to reduce crime in Ember months

    Police to reduce crime in Ember months

    The Police in Lagos have stated their readiness to collaborate with other security agencies to reduce crime during the “EMBER” months.

    The Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) in charge of Operations, Mr. Emmanuel Ngwu, made the pledge after the weekly security meeting with Governor Babatunde Fashola.

    Ngwu said the police and other security agencies would curtail crime during the months leading to the Christmas and New Year.

    “If you are not new in Lagos you will know that each time the EMBER months arrive security agencies in Lagos begin to be proactive. This is because if you look at the population of Lagos you will see the need for the police and the armed forces to do their job and the need for  every other security agency to be ready for the task ahead”,  he said.

  • Ember months: Near accident-free Yuletide

    Ember months: Near accident-free Yuletide

    In Lagos ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE reports that though the state recorded just 16 fatalities in the last yuletide impunity still rules the road.

    She left her home town Ile-Ife, in Osun State about 3.pm on Saturday, but didn’t get to her house at Agege, a Lagos suburb until 11pm last Saturday. Six of the eight hours she spent on the road was spent between Kilometre 50 and Julius Berger, a major entry point into Lagos State.

    That was the lot of Mrs Olabamiji, an events planner, who had gone home to celebrate the yuletide with her aged parents and relations.

    “Everything just went awry a short distance before the Redeemed Camp, a notorious choke point on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. There was gridlock for several hours and that was how it remained for about four hours till sanity was restored and we began to move on snail speed again,” the sapped woman narrated her ordeal to The Nation.

    What Mrs Olabamiji witnessed was not new in Lagos which has been undergoing traffic related stress since early last month. Though the traffic was heavy on most routes in the state, there was a drastic reduction in crashes and fatalities last year. This was confirmed by the Lagos State Sector Commander, Mr Chidi Nkwonta.

    Speaking in his office on Monday, ahead of the ‘Operation Zero tolerance campaign which rounds up on January 12, Nkwonta said the Corps recorded 25 percent reduction in the figure recorded in corresponding period of the previous year with 22 crashes and 16 deaths recorded through the yuletide. The highest fatality where nine people died was recorded on the Lekki-Epe Expressway, on December. That same day another person died on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, while another six persons died between December 19, 2013 and January 1, 2014. “To a large extent, there were just about five fatal crashes within the yuletide period,” he said.

    He described the development as an improvement on what obtained in the corresponding period of 2012. This, he attributed to the early ‘ember months’ campaign and traffic monitoring by men of the command.

    He said: “We witnessed a remarkable reduction in the number of crashes and fatalities recorded last year, compared to what obtained in the same period the previous year. This success is due to the massive enlightenment campaign and the deployment of men and logistics that saw us put four help desks along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and two each, along Lekki-Epe Expressway and Mile 2-Badagry Expressway. This is apart from the 2,500 special marshals and 42 vehicles including tow trucks. We leveraged also on the synergy we built with sister organisations like Nigeria Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), which brought their upgraded mobile clinic and other smaller ambulances, while LASTMA spread their operations to the inner city roads, which we had to leave as we concentrated our efforts on the major roads that leads in and out of the state.”

    He further stated that the FRSC was able to achieve minimal crashes because it began the enforcement of the campaign very early by December 15 , which ensures that his men were already on the road before the yuletide traffic began. “Our men were on the road, even on foot, calming traffic, and we went even beyond our border, handing over to the Ogun State Command after the long bridge beyond NASFAT.”

    Nkwonta said part of the successes recorded by the Corps was because of the heavy deployment of enlightenment campaign and the dissemination of fliers which were circulated by his men all over the state. “We entered all nooks and crannies of this state, visiting all garages, parks, churches, mosques, schools, hospitals, filling stations and town meetings. So, people knew what is expected of them and knew what to do to avoid being in the wrong side of the law,” he said.

    However, he said the FRSC could have achieved more if it had more support from road users and particularly in terms of support from corporate organisations operating in the state as road safety is a collective business and not that of the Corps alone.

    He said the Command could do more if it gets more patrol vehicles and other logistics from corporate organisations. Nkwonta, however, regretted that this massive deployment of enlightenment did not translate into compliance with traffic regulations from the commercial bus (Danfo) drivers and other categories of road users.

    He said the bus drivers, Keke NAPEP driver, truck drivers and even private car owners who are supposed to know better flagrantly flouted the law and were confrontational.

    He listed aggression, confrontation, impunity, and sheer arrogance as some of the attitudes that cut across all classes of road users, especially the Very Important Personalities (VIP) road users, who flouts the law with impunity and exhibits arrogance on the road, intimidating his men with their position, and threatening them to get off the hook of the law.

    “Beside the level of impunity exhibited by Politically Exposed Persons (PEP), another class of road users that have constituted a cog in the wheel of enforcement of regulations on the road are men in uniforms who flout the law, driving against oncoming traffic in what has come to be known as one way driving, blaring their siren and intimidating our men with gun, knives, and horse whips. Once these set of men break the traffic queue, other road users would follow suit,” he said. Nkwonta added that so much infraction was going on because road users know that men of the FRSC are not armed.

    “The situation is so bad that even where our men caught any driver he would quickly mobilise his colleagues and touts and without guns and without the law enforcement officers coming to our help most of the time we are helpless and the culprit would escape arrest.” What we do in such instances,” he said, was to take their number on their vehicle number plate.

    He said the Corps would continue to perfect its strategies and this has been responsible for the yearly improvement it has been recording every year. He, however, pleaded for more understanding from men in authority, important men who carry policemen as escorts who often act as if they are above the law.

    “On the highway, most of these people refuse to stop. They would rather knock you down than stop and when our men see these kind of attitude, they keep their distance since we don’t have any means of defending ourselves. Unfortunately, these men would continue to flout traffic law and get away with it because of the way we are as a people. They know they are breaking the law, using their phones, yet you cannot arrest them, because they behave as though they are above the law.”

    He said arresting for traffic offences is not a do or die affair. There would certainly be another opportunity to arrest an offender and it could be in an area where he might not be able to mobilise people to attack our men.

    He urged motorists to resolve to use the road infrastructure more responsibly in the New Year, adding that accidents do not just occur but were results of human actions. He said drivers must understand that the road must be shared with other users and must therefore exercise more restraint and patience while on the road.

     

     

  • Ember months: Firm offers travellers ‘easy ride’

    Ember months: Firm offers travellers ‘easy ride’

    The Chief Executive Officer of Ifesinachi Motors, Prince Emeka Mamah, has expressed the preparedness of his company to make the difference in these ‘ember months.’

    Mamah said: “We have vowed to give our numerous travellers the best of services never witnessed anywhere in the country. We are strategically positioned to embark on journeys at appropriate times at various locations of Ifesinachi bus terminals. Movements have also been made very easy for our travellers, whereby they can buy their tickets online rather than coming to the office to queue up. We have also procured state-of-the-art passenger jeeps that stand our company out. We have also put in place strategies to ensure that travellers will get to their destinations safely.

    “The roads have improved when compared to what was obtainable in the past, especially from Lagos to Enugu or anywhere in the east. I commend the powers that be for considering our plight by doing justice to those bad areas on our roads. I want to say that what’s worth doing should be done well rather than keeping quiet and allowing our infrastructure to go bad before considering repairs. It pleases me to say that much had been done and like Oliver twist, more should be done to improve on Nigeria roads. We expect free traffic, less accidents and attacks on the highways.”

    On the outstanding features of his company, he said: “Ifesinachi’s vehicles are wonders on wheels – very comfortable, roomy, the convenience unequalled and fully air conditioned having seat belts per sit. Each takes maximum of 11 passengers,” adding: “We did this for our passengers who are on the move having in mind the importance of time.

    “We have initiated measures to make sure that our drivers are well prepared for the challenges ahead. It has been a continuous training, frequent eye checks, good remunerations and working relationship with our management team. Over the years, this has been our guiding principles for our drivers,” he added.