99 people killed in road crashes in one week

Traffic police have revealed that at least 99 people died in 79 fatal road crashes that were registered between July 30 and August 5, 2023, across the country.

While addressing the weekly security briefing on Monday, Mr Michael Kananura, the traffic directorate spokesperson, said that in the last one week, police registered a total of 405 road crashes, of which 79 were fatal, 199 serious while 129 were minor.

“424 victims were involved in these accidents, of which 99 died and 325 sustained serious injuries. Among the fatal accidents that were registered, 36 were for motorcycles,” Mr Kananura said.

“Among those who died, five were on motorcycles as passengers, 31 were riders of motorcycles and 31 people were pedestrians on various roads in the country while nine were drivers. They also included 16 passengers in different vehicles, two pedal-cyclists and five others,” he added.

According to Mr Kananura, police preliminary investigations indicate that the accidents were mainly caused by reckless driving, in particular speeding and diverted driving.

Fatal accidents are those that involve death, serious accidents leave people injured while minor accidents are those in which only cars are damaged without fatalities or injuries.

In order to mitigate the increasing deaths as a result of road crashes, police have issued a directive to all traffic officers across the country to embark on operations in which reckless drivers are charged in courts of law rather than issuing them with express penalty scheme tickets.

“All drivers who are driving recklessly on the road, speeding or improper overtaking must be arrested by the police and taken to the courts of law. This time round, we shall not look at the express penalty scheme but rather impounding vehicles and taking offenders to courts of law,” Mr Kananura said.

“We urge the members of the public to be vigilant and call the police in case you see these bad driving behaviours on the roads. Please call the police on 0800199099, we shall immediately take action and impound these motor vehicles,” he added.

Mr Kananura said that issuing the EPS tickets has proved not to be punitive enough and it is the reason why they have resorted to impounding the vehicles and taking the offenders to the courts of law.

The new directive comes at a time when the army recently started deploying military police in various parts of the country to enforce and check on the discipline of traffic offenders especially security officers and civil servants who are abusing the traffic rules and regulations with impunity.