Singling out NTSA wont stop road deaths

At the beginning of this year, I wrote this piece, in essence blasting the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) for their ineffective road safety initiatives.

The truth is, it is beyond their ability and capacity to reduce road safety deaths in Kenya, which somehow always end up at about 3,000 per year.

They are only one of the many actors on the roads in Kenya along with the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), Kenya Police Service, Kenya National Highways Authority (Kenha), and the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (Kerra).

The tragic Naivasha accident is currently being blamed on bumps on the highway. These are clearly the domain of Kenha, whose mandate is to construct and manage national trunk roads.

Kenha is also supposed to control road reserves, access to roadside developments and implement road policies

Unlike the Film Classification Board and the Independent Electoral Boundaries Commission who have tried to expand their mandate, NTSA does its part on things like approving speed governors and Sacco registrations. Now they have a citizen self-service portal.

But NTSA is visible and unpopular because of two things they focus on to the detriment of some motorists  - drunk driving and speeding.

UNCONTROLLABLE

Roads and national highways are a shared resource and Kenyans add about 100,000 vehicles a year on them, many on the very busy highway between Mombasa and Uganda. The government plans to dual the 485km Mombasa-Nairobi highway (A109), and the 157km Nairobi-Nakuru one (A104) which form part of the Trans-African Highway.

That probably won't be completed for another decade, and for now, Kenyans should strive to use the standard gauge railway when it begins operations next year with the capacity to run six freight and four passenger trains per day between Nairobi and Mombasa

There are other things that potentially cause accidents like overlapping, motorcycles riding the wrong way on highways, buses that block highways, donkey carts and smoky overloaded trucks that drive at 30kph on the highway without lights.

These are simply uncontrollable by the NTSA or any government authority, and no one is pretending to do anything about them. There is a problem with Kenyans, and to adapt what the president said about security, “road safety starts with you and me”.

But there are citizens taking action, sending alerts about road accidents, highway blockage and traffic among other crucial messages, on platforms such as Ma3Route.

Yes, they also post where NTSA roadblocks are but overall their impact is very positive and NTSA should embrace Kenyans' tweets, messages, and video.

ACCELERATION LANES

There are also citizens taking action like Boniface Mwangi and Larry Madowo who briefly blocked an overlapping MP . There have also been road safety initiatives by Kiserian and Ongata Rongai Residents Association members and prayers by churches at different black spots.

NTSA should also carry out driver and pedestrian education to refresh our minds and understanding of road rules. There are drivers who don’t know how to use acceleration lanes because there were none in the city when they got their licenses, and there are pedestrians who don’t know how to cross the road.

“Look right, left, then right again“ before crossing the road should now also include “look out for motorcycles between cars”.

Years ago I was on one of the many road safety corporate initiatives in which I suggested mobile phone scratch cards should carry road safety messages.  The campaign died off amid too much bureaucracy.

Twitter: @bankelele