Hey Mr Driver! scale down please

• Speaking up over reckless driving can scale down road accidents, report says

Moi University lecturer Joshua Ateka wishes there was a more efficient system to regulate the local public transportation system and cut down on the high number of road accidents.

Mr Ateka, 32, spent five years in the United States where public transportation was so well organised that all a passenger needed was to insert the required amount of fare into a pay machine at the entrance to a bus, take a seat and enjoy the comfort of travelling to his or her destination.

There is no harassment from conductors, shouting and excessive speeding.

Mr Ateka returned to Kenya two years ago and landed a job at the Eldoret-based university. He says he often in deep prayer every time he travels to and from Nairobi to teach in various university campuses.

By the time the lecturer came back from the US, the tough traffic rules, called Michuki rules, that temporarily restored sanity to Kenya’s roads, had been forgotten by the authorities, passengers and matatu operators.

The matatus, the best form of public transportation in Kenya, move at high speed – leaving the don constantly fearing for his life.

“We are always helpless in those vehicles,” the don said of the speeding passenger vehicles as they compete for supremacy on the roads.

Shout and grab keys

“Sometimes I feel like shouting and grabbing the keys from the driver so that I can do the job myself,” says Mr Ateka.

Weird as it may sound, his wish to shout at careless drivers, has found the support of researchers who encourage passengers to “shout in matatus and the number of accidents will reduce”.

They think this is one of the best methods of scaling down the road carnage that took the lives of 54 people last month alone.

Some 429 others were injured in accidents across the country in April, a figure that could become thousands by the end of the year.

According to a study by scholars at Georgetown University in Washington DC, USA, passengers asking drivers to do their job carefully while on the road was found to have been a key method of ensuring they did not put their lives at risk through dangerous driving.

The researchers’ recommendation is based on a finding through an experiment in which signs encouraging passengers to voice concerns were posted inside more than 1,000 long-distance matatus.

By adopting the “voice concerns” messages, the method reduced the number of road accidents, leading to a reduction of insurance claims by about 50 per cent compared to where the messages were not posted.