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Speeding is deadly
2007-10-28 10:01:58
By Editor
In the fairly distant past, weaker vehicles and poor roads constituted circumstantial speed limiters, for which fewer people died in fewer accidents.
Nowadays, the combination of stable, mechanically sound vehicles and good roads, which should facilitate speedy, convenient delivery of people to their destinations, plus the additional benefits of time economics and faster social and economic progress, is doing the extreme opposite.
On-going measures to address accident-breeding factors like reckless drivers, speeding and unlicensed motorists must be sustained, against the backdrop of the frightening frequency of accidents that have lately been consigning many people to the graves and survivors to hospital beds.
A newer dimension relates to senior leaders, one of whom died last Wednesday and was buried yesterday Deputy Minister for Community Development, Gender and Children, Salome Mbatia.
A few are nursing injuries suffered in accidents spaced over a few weeks. High speed is pronounced in convoys for top and lower-ranking leaders, dictated by considerations of security and squeezing many engagements within a limited time frame.
The drivers are skilled but being human, they are not error-proof and are thus accident-prone.
Speed should be reduced, considering that roads are also used by motorists who include a reckless, drunken species that may cut fatally into VIP convoys.
Engagements should be trimmed, since no benefits that they yield can compensate for the fate that may befall leaders.
Safer driving of course bind everyone behind the wheel, whose miscalculations are direly costly not only to themselves and their passengers, but to other road users who may be more safety-conscious.
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