DANIEL SEMBERYA
LACK of road safety is a leading cause of death and ill health with 1.2 million fatalities and up to 50 million injured
or disabled people every year worldwide. Speaking to Business Times on Monday this week at the Tanzania Episcopal Conference in Dar es Salaam (TEC), an experienced trainer of advanced training and
transport consultancy Anthony Samuhandu, who is also the managing director of a driving school in Zambia called
BELSAMELSAM, said many road accidents were caused by very experienced drivers.
Samuhandu said it was high time for the private sector, government and other stakeholders changed the driving
attitudes for our drivers to improve the driving skills. “It doesnʼt matter how long one has been on the road,
but training is an ongoing thing, drivers need to be put on the platform and be taught, for the environment is changing and the technology is also changing, so they need to cope up with these changes”, he said.To survive today, they need a system because there are formally people who are not well trained, so for them to cope up they need to be trained, that is why we have come up with this training. “The training is meant for experienced drivers not learners. The accidents we experience on the roads today are being caused by experienced drivers”, he added.
They cause a lot of accidents because they think they know too much, that is why today you need a lot of common
sense; one needs to go beyond what he has learnt from schools in order to survive. So the training by the Bayeye
Driving School is to ensure every road user is safer (on foot, bicycle, driver himself), they must be safe on the road. The government alone cannot tackle this issue as the private sector should be involved to work together with anybody in charge of transport because it is a serious issue. Only that people nowadays are concentrating on HIV/Aids, forgetting road accidents which also kill a large number of innocent people. Most of the accidents whether in Zambia or Tanzania are caused through human errors that are within our control. So with good measures, accidents would be reduced if not eliminated. He called upon everybody to be careful of using the
roads in order to avoid accidents caused by human errors. He also said Bayeye Driving School in collaboration
with BELSAM Zambia cannot just tackle this bacause many instructors are needed including the police to understand the program and spearhead it. “These are big issues that touch the entire nation need joint efforts to solve them so that we can be safe on our roads,” he noted. According to the National Road Safety Master Plan
(NRSMP), between 2003 and 2008 the number of killed persons would increase by around 30 per cent, from 2,250 (actual) to 2,900. The costs of road traffic accidents between 2003 and 2008 would be Tsh.280bn.
In the same vein, the managing director of Bayeye Driving School, Renatus Mabeyo, told Business Times in
an exclusive interview in Dar es Salaam that “this is an unacceptable trend because we have in hand many of the
solutions to address this problem.” One of the most effective ways of cutting the number of road accidents is to continuously improve driversʼ knowledge and skills. Through his driving school, Mabeyo is offering driving training on Road Safety Compliance that leads to better transport economy for the haulers, less environmental impact on society and a higher status for driving profession at large. Driver training benefits everyone. “Drivers, transport
companies and society all benefit from driver training,” says the managing director of the Bayeye Driving School.
According to a new EU directive on driver training which would enter into force this decade, each truck or bus drivers should undergo at least 35 hours of training every five years. Bus drivers must meet this requirement by 2008 and truck drivers by 2009. Mabeyo said if drivers were professionally trained road accidents and fatalities would be prevented at high level.
In urban areas pedestrians form 60 per cent of the fatalities while passengers are the biggest group of all casualties. In rural areas, passengers are the biggest group of victims with nearly 60 per cent of all casualties. BP Tanzania has been supporting the Bayeye Driving School, being a product of ex-BP workers in terms of sharing
the idea in reducing recurrences of preventable accidents and fatalities in the country. The school has exclusively adopted BP-House Keeping, Safety and Environment (HSSE) philosophy where they operate. It states that “No accidents, no harm to the people and no damage to the environment. ”With the BP HSSE Philosophy, it is believed that a well-trained driver in defensive driving and road safety commitment would respect the road users and ensure “Safe Driving, Defensive Driving and Arrive Alive at his/her destination,” Mabeyo noted. He has urged the government through its respective departments to enforce and ensure that all drivers who have undergone a defensive driving, and road safety commitment training course must be given a sticker as evidence to have
passed the training with a certificate from a recognized drivers training institutions. Road accidents are the biggest cause of fatalities involving workforces and third parties across the world.
This has got direct impact on the individuals, their families and eventually the economy at large. Road traffic accidents not only constitute a major threat to the well-being of Tanzanians, but also to the national economy. Many of those injured or killed are innocent people and wage earners, hence leaving their families destitute and without any means of support.
Source: Business Times, People and Politics article of
Sunday Jun 29, 2008
