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Why thousands die in 10 fatal crashes daily
What you need to know:
Since 2019, the road accidents have been on the rise with more than 20,000 road crashes reported last year, according to the police report
The terrifying road crash at Lugalambo on the Jinja-Kampala highway on the evening of March 19, 2022, showed Olympic champion runner-cum-politician, Julius Acon, how vulnerable everyone is when on the road.
This was 15 years after a similar incident (car accident), in 2007 hampered his running career due to damage to his back.
“The car which was ahead of us stopped abruptly, so my car couldn’t dodge it because there was another vehicle, a heavy trailer ahead of us on the right,” Mr Acon narrated the incident at Lugalambo to our reporter.
“And on the left side, there was a hill where there is a sugar cane plantation. We ended up ramming into the [stationary] car,” he added.
Acon, who was returning from a function in Butaleja District, some 260 kilometres away from his home in Bweyogerere, Waksio District, said the accident happened at around 7:20 pm.
This is the peak hour for most road crashes in the country because many people are rushing home from work and pedestrians are also many on the road, according to information from the Police annual crime reports.
“The three of us who were in the vehicle survived –my driver, the bodyguard, and I. I did scans and there was no major injury,” the Otuke East MP said, adding that he had pain in the chest after the accident.
He also revealed that he was taken to Nile international Hospital in Jinja District before he was transferred to Nakasero Hospital on Sunday where he was discharged.
The incident at Lugalambo forms part of the rising road crashes in the country, which many may not be as lucky as Mr Acon, to survive. Police said in the Annual Crime Report for 2022 that close to four thousand people died from 20,394 road crashes that happened that year.
“The number of fatal crashes increased by 17 percent from 3,757 in 2021 to 3,901 in 2022. The number of serious crashes increased from 9,070 in 2021 to 10,776 in 2022,” the report reads.
Overall, police noted, there was a seventeen percent increase in the total number of crashes reported in 2022 from 17,443 crashes in 2021 to 20,394 crashes in 2022.
“If you look at the causes of these accidents, it remains purely reckless driving-particularly speeding and improper overtaking,” said Michael Kananura, a superintendent of police (SP) and spokesperson for the directorate of traffic and road safety at Uganda Police Force (UPF).
“We have had the majority of them being single accidents. It is entirely the behaviour of these drivers on roads,” he noted.
The spokesperson also revealed that new strategies to curb the rise in road accidents are in the offing. He said they are working on a plan together with the ministries of Health, Transport, and the Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA).
“We are planning for Fika Salama extra. This involves sensitisation on road safety, and also enforcement. This will be done massively. We shall make sure we reach out to every road user and every person on the road through television, radios, and other channels of communication,” he said.
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“We shall do enforcement on roads –specifically this one on drink-driving. Our operations [will focus] on taking on those errant drivers on the road, those who are stubborn, they must be taken to court. We shall be gathering our evidence on how they are recklessly using the roads and immediately take them to court,” he added. The police and its partners first rolled out Fika Salama seven years ago, a campaign that the Uganda Road Safety performance review report of 2018 by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, described as a success.
“….but the crashes have since increased following the reduction of the enthusiasm and funding for the operation,” the report reads.
Operation Fika Salama was introduced in August 2016 to curb the rising number of crashes on major highways, with specific emphasis on the Kampala-Masaka road.
Following the introduction of the campaign, the Police Annual Crime Report for 2017 showed there was an 8.6 percent reduction in traffic accidents reported from 14,474 in 2016 to 13,244 in 2017. But cases have since increased gradually to more than 20,000 crashes in 2022.
The United Nations review report, besides stinging the police on the issue of corruption, recommended the “need to integrate enforcement with road safety awareness for better compliance results’’ consistency in promoting all road safety interventions and increasing the number of traffic police officers to enforce the rules.
The review report also highlights the leading factors for road crashes in Uganda such as roads that are poorly constructed, a rise in the number of vehicles to around 1.8 million so far, and increases in number of people owning and using motorcycles with many in bad mechanical condition, and many people riding or driving without proper training.
“Traffic rules are well established and provided for under the Traffic Act but despite police efforts, enforcement activities are not yet sustainably deterring unsafe behaviour: Speed, alcohol and non-seat-belt use,” the review report reads.
“The public perception of the traffic police as corrupt is rife and many officers have been implicated in corruption scandals. The police leadership has taken a strong stand, which has led to the removal of up to 700 officers from the directorate in recent years,” it continues.
A recent report by the Auditor General also noted that the increasing investments in road safety interventions have not been efficient in reducing cases of crashes due to gaps in regulation and enforcement.
Drink-driving
On the issue of drink-driving, Mr Cuthbert Isingoma, the director of Uganda Road Accident Reduction Organisation, said his main concern is consistency in using breathalysers to tame accidents. The major road safety campign using breathalysers was introduced in 2013.
“Use of breathalysers is okay, only if they [police] can be consistent. Sometimes they do it for one week and then stop. That is our main concern. Will it be there permanently? Not only to firefight,” he said.
“But we know there is a cost, but let there be consistency so that people know, especially towards the weekend, so that someone knows that somebody is going to get them. And if they take the person to court, let the punishment be there instead of just giving someone a fine and the next day they are just drinking,” he added.
Asked whether low or inefficient enforcement is one of the major reasons for the rise in road crashes, Mr Kananura said: “Not really that the enforcement has reduced, but also, enforcement has not been reaching everywhere.”
“What people must understand is that the population is increasing day by day. There are very many people who get vehicles and motorcycles and get on the roads. So, you find that they are driving (or riding) from places that we have not reached,” the spokesperson said.
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“That is why we want to ensure that every person must be responsible while on the road –whether a passenger, motorist, cyclist or pedestrian. They must come on board. That is why we want to sensitise so that there is sanity on our roads,” he added.
In Kampala City, boda boda riders appear to have overwhelmed the police. On almost all city roads, boda boda nowadays ride the wrong way, heading towards oncoming traffic while the police look on.
Still on the report by the United Nations, “Uganda’s road infrastructure is generally unsafe” and pedestrians have consistently represented about 40 percent of the fatalities due to road crashes.
Among the top risk factors for road crashes, the United Nations highlighted that most of the roads are single carriageway without a median, many with steep shoulders (sides) and with few opportunities for overtaking, resulting in many head-on collisions.
“And most roads lack facilities for nonmotorised users. There is inadequate land-use planning, with numerous examples of unsafe accesses to the highway. Road safety engineering knowledge within the responsible government agencies at national, municipal and local level is very limited,” the report readed.
As a result of the rise in the number of road crashes, which is one of the major public health issues in the country, the Health ministry has also announced the recommendation for police to start using breathalysers to tame the crashes.
But some members of the public said breathalysers are not very important in curbing drink-driving because the police data indicates that its (drink-driving) contribution to crashes is low.
This discussion is coming three years after the use of breathalysers was halted because of the risk of spreading the coronavirus. One of the major campaign using breathalysers to tame road crashes was the “Red Card” campaign, which was rolled out in 2013 by police and its partners.
A breathalyser is a simple device that detects and estimates blood alcohol content when a person (motorist) is made to blow through the device’s disposable tube for several seconds.
“There was a 7.6 percent decrease in the number of accidents reported in 2013 from 19,870 in 2012 to 18,368. Fatal accidents increased slightly by 0.2 percent, serious accidents reduced by 1.7 percent and minor accidents reduced by 16.3 percent,” the 2013 Annual Crime Report reads.
According to police figures, when breathalysers were just introduced in 2013, 13,895 (72 percent) out of the total road crashes were caused by reckless driving, overspeeding and careless driving.
The other human errors were careless pedestrians (5.6 percent), passenger falls from vehicle (1.5 percent), drink-driving (1 percent), overloading and dangerous loading (0.9 percent), dazzled by light (0.1 percent). The rest were non-human errors.
The remaining 19 percent of the causes of road crashes were poor mechanical condition of vehicles (15 percent), road conditions such as potholes or mud (0.7 percent), and weather situations such as clouds or rain (0.4 percent).
Except for the changes in number of cases of crashes over the years, the leading factors for the accidents have largely remained in the same order.
However, since the introduction of breathalysers, the total number of crashes reduced from 18,368 in 2013 to 12,858 in 2019 before police stopped using breathalysers due Covid-19 risks.
But other campaigns such as Fika Salama were also introduced in the period to curb road crashes and deaths. Since 2019, the cases have been on the rise with more than 20,000 road crashes reported in 2022.
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Information from the World Health Organisation also states that driving under the influence of alcohol is “a key risk factor for 27 percent of all road injuries,” higher than figures reported by police in Uganda.
Mr Jimmy Osuret, the injury researcher at Trauma, Injuries and Disability (TRIAD) Unit of Makerere University School of Public Health, said the increase in crashes during Covid-19 and after the pandemic, could among other reasons, resulted from the confidence people got to drink and drive as the enforcement against the vice had stopped.
“People were confident that they can drink and drive. They knew even if police stopped them, they would not have equipment to test them, so there was that false confidence,” he explained.
“We had a full lockdown and then a partial lockdown. The information at hand is that since the congestion of the vehicles had reduced, there was a lot of speed and more people were walking –pedestrians. You may find that more pedestrians were the most affected (victims of road crashes),” Mr Osuret added.
Beer companies reported increases in sales of alcohol and profit during the pandemic, signalling increased consumption during the pandemic, which has killed 3,600 in the last three years, compared to an average of 10,000 people killed in the same period.
Mr Patrick Onyango, the police spokesperson for Kampala Metropolitan Area, said they started the crack-down on drunk drivers last Friday night using breathlysers.
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“Last night (Friday last week), we carried out an operation and it was in selected areas of Kampala Metropolitan Area where we managed to arrest 43 suspects. They slept in our cells and those who were sober in the morning, we brought them out and asked them to go and pay express penalty tickets of Shs200,000 at the bank. The operation will continue, it will not stop today. We want to caution motorists, please, you have gone for party, dont drink and drive,’’ he said.
Mr Lawrence Niwabiine, the acting director of Traffic and Road Safety in the Uganda Police Force, told Daily Monitor at the weekend that following the halting of the use of breathalysers, they have been determining alcohol intoxication among motorists using blood tests.
However, halting the use of breathalysers meant netting the offenders before they caused accidents could have been hampered or reduced, according to the Health ministry.
“Ugandans are the leading alcohol consumers in Africa and many individuals drive under the influence of alcohol. You will recall, due to Covid-19 in 2020, the Ministry of Health advised against the use of breathalysers, for fear of spreading Covid-19 in the process. It is sad to note that since then, Uganda has registered an increase in road traffic accidents with 40 percent being fatal,” Dr Henry Mwebesa, the director general of Health Services at the Health ministry said.
Research
Ms Esther Bayiga Zziwa, another road safety researcher at the TRIAD unit of Makerere University School of Public Health, said there is laxity by the government to adopt and enforce measures that would reduce road accidents.
She said one of the measures is to shift to well-managed mass transportation, having well-planned and maintained roads, elimination of boda bodas (from the capital city) are the most effective interventions to reduce road accidents and deaths.
“We have realised from research that human behaviour is harder to change so interventions focusing on that are becoming of lesser interest. We need to have systems and infrastructure that make it difficult for people to die even if they don’t know how to use the road,” the researcher said. “We need to make sure vehicles are in good mechanical condition and the roads are constructed to accommodate all road users. If I put a flyover, even if a road user is drunk, no car will find them there. People don’t need to die because of one mistake, we have to move away from blaming Ugandans that they are not serious,” she added.
A recent report by the Auditor General, titled: “A value for money audit report on the regulation and promotion of safe and reliable public road transport system by the Ministry of Works and Transport,” also gives insights on how to reduce road crashes.
The report shows that between 2017 and 2022, there were 18,861 fatalities (25.1 percent), 50,553 serious injuries (67.4 percent), and 5,563 minor injuries (7.4 percent) among those affected.
“The majority of these incidents (83.2 percent) were caused by careless and reckless driving (79 percent) and vehicles in dangerous mechanical conditions (4 percent), according to the reports of the Uganda traffic police,” the audit report reads.
Road transport is the dominant mode of transportation in Uganda, accounting for more than 90 percent of passenger transit and cargo freight, according to government statistics.
Mr Muwanga noted that although substantial money, around “Shs3.5 billion” is channelled by the government annually to the Ministry of Works and Transport (MoWT) to regulate and promote safety, poor regulation has persisted and this is causing increases in the accidents. A total of Shs17.2 billion was channeled by the Finance ministry to the MoWT for the regulation and promotion of road safety in the five years reviewed.
“The public transport industry has a number of obstacles. Only buses are fully regulated, public service vehicles (PSVs) services are not timetabled or integrated, and PSVs are typically in dangerous mechanical condition (DMCs),” Mr Muwanga said in the report.
The report also showed that the country last year lost around Shs29.5 billion in potential revenue because of the failure of the Ministry of Works and Transport to get non-tax revenue from the issuance of licences because non-licensed passenger service vehicles (PSVs) and motorcycles are being allowed to operate in the country.
“Ministry of Works and Transport (MoWT) needs to enhance its PSV licensing efforts since more than 69.5 percent of the PSVs that were checked were not licensed by the MoWT,” Mr Muwanga emphasised in the report.
“This [unlicensed vehicles and boda bodas] put commuters’ lives at risk and potential loss of government revenue. It’s also bad for the country’s security because unlicensed PSVs could be used to help criminals,” he added.
Mr Muwanga also cited in the report that there was issuance of driving licenses without following the laid down procedures, and irregular issuance of valid driver’s licenses amid inadequate advocacy and sensitisation about road safety.
However, the Ministry of Works and Transport in their official response, said although they have increased efforts to reduce cases of road accidents, they are equally facing challenges in regulation.
On the issue of unlicensed boda bodas, the ministry said political interference is complicating their work.
“Regulation of boda boda operations has presented many challenges to both the ministry and UPF. This is due to the individual nature of their operations and the perceived political patronage which in most cases interferes with the implementation of interventions by the ministry,” the ministry said.
The ministry also indicated that in collaboration with Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), the Minisrty of Local Government and UPF, they have commenced the process of streamlining boda bodas in Kampala.
The ministry further explained that this intervention includes designating stages of operation, requiring all operators to belong to public transport entities in order to improve self-compliance and ease monitoring.
“The ministry, in conjunction with KCCA and the UPF have embarked on a mass training programme of boda boda riders to create programme awareness on safe riding practices and their tax obligations. The process of streamlining will then be replicated in other parts of the country,” the response reads.
Regarding non-compliance by other categories of PSVs to acquire operational licenses, the ministry said they would take measures to address the identified gaps.
“The ministry has been sharing information on licensed vehicles and providing responses on queried vehicles as and when required. The ITMS project, which is in the final stages of implementation, involves creating interfaces between government agencies which will enable information sharing in real time,” the ministry promised.
The ministry also said they regularly hold public hearings with bus operators where they are educated about their responsibilities among others.
“A notification module has also been developed to serve as a reminder to the PSV operators to renew the licences. This will increase compliance. The period cited, included a national lockdown period and operators were required upon opening to operate at half capacity until January 2022,” the Ministry responded.
The ministry added: “Most of the operators reduced their operating fleet during this period. The Minister of Works and transport [Gen Katumba Wamala] has written to Inspector General of Police Martins Okoth-Ochola directing him to enforce [the rules] on vehicles that are operating without statutory requirements”.
THE LAW
Section 112 of the Traffic Control and Road Safety Act, 1998, outlaws driving after consuming more than the legal alcohol limit, which is 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millimeters of blood. But some motorists alleged that police have not been considering the level of alcohol consumed and would make everyone who tested alcohol appear as culprits. The price of the device ranges from $125 (Shs500,000) to $500 (Shs1.8 million), according to our quick internet search.
UN RECOMMENDATION
The United Nations review report, besides stinging the police on the issue of corruption, recommended the “need to integrate enforcement with road safety awareness for better compliance results’’ consistency in promoting all road safety interventions and increasing the number of traffic police officers to enforce the rules.
