Insane fines will not end road accidents

Gem MP Jakoyo Midiwo’s Traffic Amendment Bill is an emotive reaction insufficient to deal with road carnage due to other causal factors omitted by the Bill.

The opportunity to amend clauses should be in-depth. To start with whose interest does the archaic colonial Traffic Act enacted of 1940s serve? It ought to have been repealed.

Incompetence starts at licensing “driving schools” that mostly teach how to pass a driving test at the expense of how to drive well.

They operate in dingy partitioned offices and churn out thousands of half-baked people into the highways to cause untold havoc.

The Vehicle Check Unit is no longer effective which explains the high number of unroadworthy vehicles plying our highways.

Bad road designs, potholes, lack of road signs, roadside corruption are but some of the real issues not addressed by the Midiwo Bill.

Levying insanely stiff fines and setting life imprisonment alone cannot deter road carnage. Your guess as to who benefits from such punitive decrees is as good as mine.

Lack of consulting stakeholders to formulate a sober Bill makes this law just another window-dressing.

Motorists are opposed to the clause which allows any policeman to inspect vehicles as it increases avenues of harassment and bribery.

Accidents should not be criminalised as they are not intentional.

PETER MURIMA,
Motorists Association of Kenya, Nairobi