How can police help fight runaway road accidents?

On Wednesday, seven people died and 11 others were injured in a road accident involving a bus and a truck at Namayonjo village in Nakasongola District. According to the traffic directorate spokesperson, Mr Charles Ssebambulidde, the accident involved a bus that reportedly rammed into a parked truck at Namayonjo with the preliminary findings pointing to reckless driving.
“The bus that was travelling to Kitgum District from Kampala City rammed into the stationary truck at Namayonjo village. It is believed that the bus driver was possibly speeding and there were no road signs to signal that the truck was parked. Both vehicles were facing the same direction,” Mr Ssebambulidde related in an interview. The local council chairperson of Namayonjo says the place has become a death trap.
“We have witnessed more than five accidents at this spot since 2018. I have at least witnessed three accidents at this very spot,” he said.
Now police are hunting the driver of the ill-fated bus to give authorities vital information, meaning the driver is among the survivors of the accident and will soon be behind the steering wheel of another bus to endanger many other lives, again.
The Namayonjo accident is but one of the numerous fatalities on the roads that we have witnessed lately.
Several factors have been advanced to explain away the incessant accidents on our roads, including the narrowness of the roads, poor road designs, reckless driving, negligence and the existence of black spots. So if these are known reasons, why is police not dealing with them?
It is, therefore, time government came up with a deliberate plan to redesign the major roads and highways to make them two-way traffic with several lanes to accommodate many vehicles at a go moving in the same direction; just as it would occur for the approaching cars.
Our narrow roads with poorly marked road marks do not give the drivers ample time to navigate in case of an emergency to avoid collision or ramming into other motorists and even pedestrians.
Then there is a loud presence of traffic police in the city and towns and very minimum visibility on narrow busy highways where reckless driving is more evident. Realigning the deployment and avoiding behaving ad hoc and firefighting after an accident will help stem the rate of fatalities on the roads, notwithstanding the fact that the drivers need to constantly put in check.
It is our view that all major highways should have well supervised CCTV cameras to monitor traffic and coordinate activities on the roads.