IN yesterday’s edition, we carried a story titled Heroes: Number of accidents surges, where police statistics showed that the number of accidents that occurred during the Heroes and Defence Forces holidays shot to 149 this year from 134 last year.
According to the police, the number of fatal accidents, however, decreased from 12 to 8.
National police spokesperson Commissioner Paul Nyathi attributed most of the accidents to recklessness, mechanical faults, speeding and overtaking errors.
“For instance, in a fatal accident which occurred on August 13 at around 0645 hours at corner St Patrick’s and Seke roads, the accident was caused by an overtaking error,” he said.
Each year, we get these statistics and it is sad that we keep losing lives through these human errors.
Where are we getting it wrong?
In the case of the Seke Road accident, we have seen that most commuter omnibuses that ply that route will be speeding.
Anyone who has boarded a commuter omnibus to Chitungwiza will testify.
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It is the same for those that use Bulawayo Road.
Early this year, after several conventional buses had been involved in a number of fatal accidents in Zimbabwe, a Chinese representative of a top conventional buses supplier to Zimbabwe said they would install speed limiters on their buses before they are shipped to Zimbabwe.
“After July 2023, all buses coming have speed limiters, which limit the bus’ speed to between 100km/h and 110km/h being the maximum,” the representative said.
The speed limiters are installed permanently and can work for a lifetime if the drivers to not tamper with them.
Good move.
But still we come across complaints of speeding buses along our highways.
We believe the move should extend to all commuter omnibuses that are being imported into the country.
They should also be fixed with speed limiters if we are serious about arresting the numerous accidents that are claiming citizens’ lives on the country’s roads.
The problem is that most of these buses and commuter omnibuses are not being serviced properly.
This then puts in danger the lives of commuters and even pedestrians.
To make matters worse, some of the public transporters even pass through roadblocks and are not even fined.
Government must enforce a policy that all bus and commuter omnibus imports must first go to the Vehicle Inspectorate Depots to be fixed with speed limiters before they can get registration plates or route licences.
Also, government must enforce laws where owners of the buses or commuter omnibuses involved in fatal accidents and it is found that their drivers are either unlicensed or do not have retests are put to book.
The age limit should also be raised for people driving public transport vehicles.
Our roads need mature people who know and value the sanctity of lives.
Gone are the days when young, incompetent drivers will be behind the wheels.
The energy put by government in fixing our roads ahead of the Sadc Heads of State and Government Summit can also be directed towards making our roads safe again.
