Hey Mr Driver! scale down please

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.

The authors of the research report, Mr James Habyarimana and Mr William Jack, said they used a variety of stickers in both Kiswahili and English.

They bore messages like, “Don’t just sit there as he drives dangerously! Stand up. Speak up. Now.”

During the study, matatu drivers were encouraged to leave the stickers in place by means of a weekly lottery whereby a driver could win up to Sh5,000 if his vehicle was found to have all stickers intact upon inspection by the research team.

About 3,000 people die in road accidents annually in Kenya, according to government statistics. Many of the accidents are blamed on careless driving, with most drivers failing to abide by traffic rules.

Others fail to take adequate rest during driving, especially bus and truck drivers plying long distances.

Lately, however, police seem to be waking up to the reality that they could fight the matatu madness by taking both passengers and crew to task whenever they break traffic rules.

Last Monday, 200 people were charged in a Makadara court in the sprawling eastern suburb of Nairobi with offences related to shouting when picking up passengers, travelling while standing and careless driving, among others.

It has been a tradition that touts shout when picking up passengers, who, upon entering the matatus, become slaves of the crew.

Their views cannot be considered even where they care to speak. At the Makadara court, resident magistrate John Tamar jailed 119 who admitted creating a nuisance by touting for a day each and ordered them to clean and sweep around the court compound.

Mr Tamar did not spare passengers either. He fined 40 who had been arrested for either travelling on matatus while standing or failing to fasten seat belts.

Chief Inspector Susan Kirori, prosecuting, said the passengers endangered their lives by overloading public service vehicles.

Your own safety

“They did not care whether they were covered by the insurance policies of the vehicles they had boarded to various destinations. They only wanted to get to their work places on time,” she said.

In his ruling, Mr Tamar told the traffic rules defaulters that passengers were expected to assist the police in arresting the escalating road carnage.

He said passengers who boarded public service vehicles must ensure that they complied with traffic rules by fastening their seat belts and report speeding drivers.

“Why did you board vehicles which were already full?” Mr Tamar asked the accused, “You are your own safety when you observe traffic rules,” he told them and ordered them to pay a fine of Sh2,000 each or serve two months imprisonment in default.

Mr Stephen Wakaba of the Matatu Drivers and Conductors Association agreed with the findings of the research, calling on passengers to take control of driving by voicing concerns whenever vehicles were driven carelessly.

“Passengers must make it a habit of shouting at a driver whenever they feel he is not doing his work well,” he said. “We will be glad if there are passengers who would stop a driver, snatch his keys and hand them over to the conductor if that would save their lives by preventing irresponsible driving.”

Mr Wakaba said it was sad that some passengers who survived accidents were quick to narrate how dangerously the vehicles were being driven.

He said his association was pushing for safe driving and had advised against drink driving. He warned drivers with the notion that insuring their vehicles was all they needed to do, saying that they should always guard against losing lives.

The Matatu Drivers and Conductors Association boss also spoke against drivers working long hours.

“We have seen drivers who fall asleep on the roads leading to road accidents,” he said.

His assertion came on a day when the government announced that long distance vehicles would in future have two drivers to guard against exhaustion.

Traffic commandant Aggrey Adoli said the proposed guidelines for long-distance passenger vehicles sought to have conductors who were also qualified drivers. 

Even before the guidelines come into force, Mr Adoli asked bus owners to start implementing the proposals. The conductors would act as alternate drivers to relieve colleagues when they got tired.

Exhaustion has been identified as a major cause of accidents involving long-distance buses and trucks, he said.

Road accidents account for as many deaths in Africa and the rest of the developing world as does malaria, according to the World Health Organisation.

And according to the Association of Kenyan Insurers, about nine people die in road accidents each day.

The US researchers’ report says it is popularly believed in Kenya that “otherwise rational young males are transformed, Jekyll-and-Hyde-like, into irrational death-seekers when they occupy the driver’s seat of a minibus or matatu”.

“Our intervention motivates passengers to exercise their power as consumers, literally giving them a voice, by encouraging them to speak up, to heckle and chide the driver when his behaviour compromises their safety,” the researchers say.

The Washington-based Centre published the research paper Heckle and Chide: Results of a Randomised Road Safety Intervention in Kenya, recently for Global Development.