Road Accidents Cause 10% Global Deaths

Worried by the alarming statistics of deaths by road traffic accidents, the management of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) has called for concerted efforts of all stakeholders to check the ugly tide, and save generations of Nigerians and other citizens of the world from premature deaths.

Managing Director of SPDC, Mr Mutiu Sunmonu, who said this at the Niger Delta road safety risk management workshop, organised for 100 personnel of FRSC, police, state road management officers and NSCDC, from Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Imo and Abia, by Shell in Port Harcourt, pointed out that road traffic injuries were the leading causes of death globally, adding that road accidents are the 10th leading cause of all deaths and 9th leading contributor to the burden of disease.

Sunmonu stressed that “even with only 48 per cent of the world’s registered vehicles, over 90 per cent of these fatalities occur in low and middle-income countries, including Nigeria.

Represented by the Asset Manager, Land East, Chidube Nnene-Anochie, the Shell managing director noted that it was because of the global and massive scale of the issue that the United Nations declared 2011-2020, a “decade of action for road safety”, with a goal to stabilise and reduce global road deaths by 2020.

He stated that effective road safety management was crucial to preventing crashes and saving the lives of millions of people, and stressed that to achieve this, capacity building of road safety risk management practitioners was key.

In his remarks, Africa Regional Coordinator, Global Road Safety Partnership, Dr Pieter Venter, regretted the rising deaths associated with road accidents in spite of efforts by corporate bodies and some governments to ensure compliance to road safety rules and regulations, and pledged the preparedness of his organisation to up awareness on the menace as a veritable means of reducing carnages and saving lives.

Speaking, Zonal Commander, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Assistant Corps Marshal Chike Nwaka, noted that even as high as the statistics are, the number of figures on road traffic accidents in Nigeria was incorrect as a whole gamut of cases are neither reported to the police nor the FRSC, and attributed the high incidence of road traffic accidents to poor vehicle maintenance culture, poor state of roads, low level of literacy, and most importantly, the human factor, among others.

While commending the Rivers State Government for embarking on the reconstruction and expansion of most roads as well as provision of directional signs to aid safety observance and compliance, Nwaka thanked Shell for initiating the training programme for core road safety risk practitioners in the region, and pledged the readi