Ghana, National Road Safety Authority to Stop use of TVs in Commercial Buses

BY ANIN AGYEI–

City Bus
Photo Credit: Amazon.de

NEW AFRICA BUSINESS NEWS, Accra, Ghana- NATIONAL Road Safety Authority(NRSA) in Ghana has vowed to crackdown Televisions mostly found in buses as part of one of the measures to reduce rampant accident on the road.

According to the authority, TV’s in vehicles are very big distraction to passengers and drivers which cause a lot of accidents on the highways, adding that the authority is going to crack the whip.

Speaking to the media at Nkawkaw in the Eastern Region, a Road Safety Advocate of the in the area Mr. David Abunyah said passengers are there to monitor drivers in case they flaunt driving laws such as over speeding, wrong overtaking and others could cause accidents.

Mr. Abunyah said, section 189 of the Road Safety Acts is against TVs found on dashboards of vehicles. It states that, ‘’ (1) a person shall not use or operate a television monitor or a similar device on the dashboard of a motor vehicle while the motor vehicle is in motion; that (2) a person who contravenes sub-regulation commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than twenty-five penalty units or to a term of imprisonment of not more than thirty days or both.

He said the authority will soon acquire the power to arrest drivers who fix televisions in buses to benefit passengers adding that passengers also have the duty to monitor the driver.

“You see, when passengers become so engulfed in watching TV in vehicles their focus is turned off the road making them unaware of what goes on,” he stated

Mr. Abunyah mentioned preaching in buses by local pastors as another source of distraction to drivers and passengers, a situation he said must not be allowed.

He also advised passengers to engage drivers to know if they have their driver’s license before they board their cars.

Meanwhile, the National Road Safety Manager of the Eastern Region, Mr Abdulai Bawa Gamsah said in 2018, Eastern Region was number one in road accidents statistics but now at number three in the country though they are doing their possible best to eradicate the menace.

According to him, many stakeholders in the Region seemed care-free because they were of the view that those vehicles were transit buses.

Mr. Gamsah added that several causes account for road accidents but per their statistics they realised that the most causes of accident in the region was driver inattentiveness.

BY ANIN AGYEI, NEW AFRICA BUSINESS NEWS, AFRICA CORRESPONDENT

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