Kenya road safety move is futile

Road accidents have become a national crisis. The number of deaths on the roads is horrifying and necessitates drastic action. Most of the interventions have failed because of corruption and sheer lack of willpower. But that does not mean that we despair; action must be taken, and urgently.

On Tuesday, President Uhuru Kenyatta directed the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA), which has the mandate of enforcing safety on the roads, to pull out and leave the job to traffic police. Clearly, that was a response to public uproar over the incompetence of the agency to execute its mandate.

The NTSA is known more for thoughtless actions, such as the blanket ban on night travel for buses, than proactive and well-calculated steps to end accidents. The establishment of the authority was seen as the panacea to road carnage; that it would act differently from the traffic police. But it failed lamentably. Its officers became as corruptible and notorious as the police. They duplicated roles with the traffic police, brought no new ideas on road safety and extended the extortion ring.

Whereas we understand the president’s anger and desire to end the road carnage, the directive is futile. The police are notorious for extortion and abetting mayhem on the road. Speeding, faulty and unroadworthy vehicles routinely go through police roadblocks without being stopped because they pay protection fees. Several police officers run fleets of public service vehicles that are never checked and contribute to the heavy death toll on the roads.

Returning the road safety role to the traffic police, therefore, amounts to institutionalising disorder.

The problem is lack of enforcement of traffic rules because all the responsible agencies are conflicted. Issuing directives easily appeals to the public but cannot translate to change unless the challenges are properly thought through. The government must explore more practical solutions to road carnage. /Nairobi, January 10