The menace that is bodas

Boda boda transport is a lifestyle for most road users in Uganda. There is always one bad idea at the back of every user’s mind, however – its name is boda accident.
Not a day passes in our capital, Kampala without a fatal boda accident.

And boda boda riders tell you that when you get invloved in an accident and the victim is taken to Mulago hospital’s casualty ward, they will most likely get a body part amputated.
According to the Injury Control Centre, there are up to 20 boda-related cases at Mulago National Referral hospital in Kampala every day.

Another report by Makerere University College of Health Sciences and the department of Orthopedics at Mulago, says about 40 per cent of trauma cases at the hospital are boda boda accidents.

Life on the two wheels is indeed precarious.
It is felt more closely when someone close to you loses their life on that machine or, gets hospitalised with injuries. The latter, is still a blessing.
And for the past four weeks, three workmates have been victims of boda boda accidents.

One is my neighbour at work. I remember her calling her mother to pick and drop her at a hospital because she was not feeling well. Mum was sadly busy, so, she opted for a boda B…as she calls it. Somewhere around Bugolobi, they were knocked down, fell off, injuring her pretty face – I didn’t like looking at her bruised face then. She took bed rest for some days. But thank God she is still alive without major injuries because her boda rider died.

The second colleague was hurrying to office to catch a meeting. Somewhere around Namuwongo, he fell off the boda, throwing his fat tummy on the road. He says jokingly that his tummy was to thank for the light injuries he got. His trousers were not that lucky.

He posted on his Facebook wall later, “The highlight of the two-minute early morning show was a passerby woman who said, ‘Ssebo empale yo eyulise’. That trouser, I am going to frame. It was ripped into two, held together only by the belt.”
More gratitude to God. He could post mischievously.

And last weekend, another colleague, was riding through Bukoto on the dangerous machine, when a speeding car hit them.
His face got damaged among other body parts. I was glad to see him smiling in a Whatsapp photo that he shared after the accident with blood flowing over his head. He might have realised how lucky he was because another speeding car just stopped close enough not to run over him.
Bodas are treacherous.

I use bodas often. Many of you do due to the urgency of matters. When I hear city authorities are planning to ban them from the city, I also ask, “what shall we use?” But again, I tell myself, that is the right thing to do – there are so many deaths that bodas are a national threat.

We need to regulate boda bodas in the country, organise them, have them well trained to use the roads, and establish routes they cannot use – and penalise them if they don’t comply.
And like it is the case in neighbouring Rwanda, every boda should wear a vest, and helmet, so, should every passenger. A speed limit must be established for them, and also, the side of the road they ought to ride from.
Those things should be enforced whether bodas operate in the city or villages.