SIR, a few days ago, I watched with dismay an utter display of lawlessness and irrational behaviour by truck drivers and I had to ask myself the question – when will this recklessness and road terrorism end in our country?
Many people seem to feel the same way with the attitude shown by these notorious drivers. It is a known fact that trucks on Nigerian roads are habitually found to indulge in over-loading, over-speeding, carrying unsecured containers, lane indiscipline, using rickety vehicles, driving with worn-out tyres and lack safety equipment, among other offences.
These acts of lawlessness do not end there. The drivers’ penchant for violating traffic rules and regulations is alarming. Their attitude to vehicle maintenance is scarcely anything cheering. They compromise the integrity and road-worthiness of their vehicles with impunity and in the process, endanger the safety of other road users at will. What we see on our highways are carcasses of countless tankers, trucks and related articulated vehicles and reminding us of the abuse to which our public utilities have been subjected to in terms of decrepit highways and poorly maintained infrastructure such as telephone booths, railings, electricity and bridges.
The main issues to contend with have to do with attitudinal problem on the part of the drivers as well as the inability of road regulators to enforce the extant laws so as to punish traffic offenders.
The FRSC needs to intensify efforts at addressing the continuous recklessness by curtailing the bad driving habits as well as the negative attitude of truck and trailer drivers through its four cardinal programmes of education, enlightenment, subtle force and full enforcement.
Stemming the tide demands nothing short of strict enforcement of relevant traffic rules. Poor standardization of rules, weak and compromised enforcement, as well as dubious benchmarks for certifying both vehicles and users constitue a major obstacle for our road administrators to tackle.
All tankers operating in the country should be made to compulsorily use retroflective tapes to ensure better sighting and anticipation of long vehicles when light from other vehicles are beamed on them, most especially at night when they usually break-down at dangerous spots when visibility is poor. Other law enforcement agencies should also assist in ensuring safety on our roads. What they need to do, as a matter of urgency, is to desist from collecting bribe from the drivers. Furthermore, the ages of the vehicles in an economy such as ours may be an issue, but of greater concern is the maintenance and road-worthiness. Government should not allow the importation of rickety vehicles into the country under any guise.
FRSC should put more efforts at engaging the various transport unions on the need for their members to be law-abiding and comply with the traffic rules and regulations. The commission should ensure the speedy prosecution of offenders at mobile courts for reckless and dangerous driving, speed limit violation, among other traffic offenses. More importantly, government should also ensure that our railways begin to function without delay. When this is done, most of the articulated vehicles that are seen wreaking havoc on our roads would no longer have any business in doing so.
The government should muster the political-will to tame the cabal that has made our railways non-functional despite the huge national resources committed to this troubled aspect of our economy over the years. Perhaps, that could be a more pragmatic solution to stopping recklessness by truck drivers on our roads!
Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta
