By Donald Iorchir
The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has said that majority of accident on our roads were caused by overloading and speeding by drivers.
This assertion was made during a mini rally by Road Safety Corps on the danger of overloading, seatbelt and other offenses at Kuje Motor Park recently.
Chief Route Commander, Mrs. Medinat Akambi, cautioned commercial bus to always carry three passengers at the back seat, while the small vehicles should carry three at the back seat and one in the front seat.
She warned that any offender caught would have his vehicle impounded and also discharge to the mobile court set up by the commission.
The route commander maintained that the “FRSC is not an enemy of any organisation, but an agency that is really to preach against any form of mishap on the road, a situation which he said has heaped insults on corps members.”
She said over 90 per cent of road mishaps are as a result of overloading and speeding at inappropriate places, pointing out that non-observation of speed limit and complete disobedience to FRSC Patrol or Field Officers were other contributory factors to the situations of the road mishaps.
She stressed that the activities of the educated individuals who had turned to commercial vehicles, while going to their offices and that government drivers had caused a lot of trouble to the unit.
She remarked that 92 per cent of satellite residents who worked in the city centre had turned their private cars to commercial once and committed any kind of traffic offences, “if a traffic officer tries to stop them, they feel very bad and can even insult the traffic officer and boast of connection in the high places or promised to sack the officer.”
Reacting, some of the drivers, Mr. Jegede Afolanya and Nuhu Obaje, said they would obey the road signs officers of the commission as stipulated, since they were out to save lives of road users, but emphasised that they sometimes engaged overloading in order to meet up with family needs due to hardship in the country.
It would recalled that few weeks ago, a trailer crushed a commercial vehicle, resulting to multiple accidents during which more than 29 passengers were killed, leaving several others with injuries along Giri-Gwagwalada-Lokoja Road, in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).