By Merion Tibabiganya

At the time of suspending periodic vehicle inspection, road carnage was declining. The main reason given for this inhuman penalty was Police Corruption”

Earlier my team had carried out comprehensive training for senior traffic officers and vehicle inspectors. We instilled strict codes of conduct and professionalism which improved the existing traffic holocaust.

The annual number of victims fell from 11,600 to 8,500 in only two years. Surely, if a roof is leaking and the land lord removes the leaking iron sheet without replacing it; will the tenant stay in that house, or stupidly go on hunger strike?

Last year alone, the carnage consisted of 2,300 dead and 12,000 injured Ugandans.

May the souls of the dead rest in eternal peace and may the injured return to normal life! Surprisingly, these victims of our ramshackle traffic laws and vehicles do not get full assistance from their own country and usually pass away because there is no adequate medical care and other aid to sustain them.

The current irregular Police surveillance and surprise vehicle inspections cannot go far because the Police lack logistics and are few in numbers hence they are stressed and ineffective at service delivery.

Besides, a good number of senior officers who underwent our professional training were promoted and posted in other departments.

This overstretching of the traffic personnel has obvious negative impact on the entire traffic. The new trainees have some omissions that exacerbate all the shortcomings like giving two conflicting signals for vehicles in motion at junctions.

All together Uganda is loosing up to sh800b annually in property distraction and damage; injuries; fatalities and loss of life expectation. The victims are left at the mercy of the Third Party Insurance hogwash which, in most cases) is sabotaged by insurance hooligans.

Claimants that live out of Kampala spend long hours chasing money which turns out to be peanuts. Certainly no dead person is worth sh1m but many claims are less than sh1m in cases where dozens perish in one accident as has been the case on our trunk roads. Let us be more serious and give victims of the chaotic traffic accidents compensation in monetary terms.

If the victims have not contributed to the accident, the killer vehicle should be impounded and auctioned within a month if the owners and drivers of the vehicles fail to pay the compensation. Serious injuries should be treated seriously and as such money should be raised to deal with the cases by auctioning vehicles of the people responsible for the accident. If the amount raised from auctioned vehicles is not enough, the personal property of the owners and drivers of the killer vehicles should be sold.

This measure alone has an impact of reducing accidents by a significant amount. Otherwise the killing of Ugandans on our roads will remain. The current scenario where an innocent road user is killed by a drunken driver, in control of a ramshackle vehicle and continues driving as if he has killed a wild animal in a forest, will also continue. Most vehicles entering Uganda are rejects from other countries. One wonders why the Revenue Authority hurries to give them registration numbers without verifying the state of fitness of the monsters it is registering. Such vehicles must be inspected first before they are registered and government should set standards regarding maximum mileage and age of used vehicles for the purpose of entry, registration and use on our roads.

New vehicles should also be inspected to ensure they did not suffer any damage during transit and insist on repair if there is any damage before registration. We are over seven qualified and experienced vehicle inspectors under the aegis of Uganda Engineering Surveyors (valuers) and Loss Assessors who can fill the vacuum until we have privatised ‘returned the periodic inspection back to the Police.

We have been carrying out acceptance, road worthiness, intermediate, and complete survey inspections of vehicles, plant and machinery since 1972. The mysterious and haphazard search for private vehicle inspectors should be halted immediately.

Accidents can be reduced following the country’s safety features. Pedestrians are being treated as bustard children of traffic by errant drivers, yet at every park even drivers turn into pedestrians after parking their vehicles.

Provisions must be made for pedestrians on all highways with wide zebra crossings every 400 metres in all towns and other natural crossing points like schools and hospitals.

‘“Instead of being left in the hands of private and independent gamblers, the government must come in and set standards and examinations for all the drivers in the country. All drivers must also under go periodic medical inspections to confirm they are still fit to sit behind the wheel. Traffic courts should be established quickly in every region so that all traffic cases are handled diligently and punctually.

In many serious accidents, many people have died because they could not reach hospitals on time. Accident monitoring must be streamlined so that the injured reach hospitals under one hour from the time of impact. I appeal to the Works Ministry to ensure road design; construction and maintenance incorporate traffic safety features meticulously.

The Traffic Police should be fully trained, given logistics and distributed in adequate numbers along all the roads with motorised traffic.

All debris hazards from falling trees and loose road banks must be removed immediately by the same ministry so that all drivers including visiting ones don’t get trapped dangerously.

Our Parliament should think again and adjust the budget for road safety. If the Bureau of Statistics gets shlb and the road safety gets only sh150m annually then something must have gone wrong somewhere.

NRSC should get a minimum of sh4m annually and after it has merged with the Licensing Board the new Authority should get a minimum of sh8b plus all logistics and adequate staffing annually if at all we wish our country any good.

The writer is an independent transport consultant and vehicle inspector