FRSC, Motorists And Psychiatric Tests

Ten days into the launch of Operation Cobra, a nationwide special traffic law enforcement exercise initiated by the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), the commission says a total of 585 drivers were arrested for 652 violations from July 1 to July 10, 2017.
The Corps Marshal, Dr Boboye Oyeyemi who disclosed this to newsmen in Abuja recently said, of the number, 109 had been referred for psychological evaluation to ascertain the state of their psychological and mental health.
The exercise which targets five rampant life-threatening offences including use of cell phone while driving, route violation, traffic light violation, dangerous driving and over-loading has the referral of arrested violators to medical facilities for psychological examination as a key component.
The operation also includes the withdrawal of the driver’s licences of offenders, pending the confirmation or otherwise of their sanity, while they are also to bear the full cost of the test to be conducted at recognised public medical facilities.
This latest move by the FRSC was informed by observed aggravating crashes and disobedience to road traffic laws and regulations by road users in the country.
The Tide appreciates the efforts of the FRSC at curbing needless loss of lives and property on our roads and wishes to commend this latest initiative by the Corps, coming after the introduction of the speed limiting device in October, last year.
We, however, make haste to implore that the FRSC must ensure a holistic and non-discriminatory implementation of this policy if it intends to succeed and take Nigeria out of the unenviable list of countries with the worst record of road mishap in the world.
In May 2011, Nigeria was said to be the second country with the worst road crashes in the world. According to a report made public by the FRSC that year, the country ranked 191 out of 192 countries across the globe with unsafe roads, recording 162 death rate per 100,000 population from road accidents. Similarly, in 2015, the road safety corps said it recorded 5,400 deaths in 12,077 road crashes, representing 65 percent fatality rate of road accident victims.
It is against this background that we endorse the measures so far taken by the FRSC to stem the deadly trend, while urging the Corps to ensure that it does not limit the enforcement of its mental stability/psychological test policy to hapless commercial drivers and ordinary Nigerian road users alone, but to extend it to everyone no matter how highly placed.
While in other climes traffic rules and regulations are observed and obeyed by all, including the highest ranked government functionaries like Prime Ministers and Presidents, in Nigeria, top government officials are among the most flagrant violators. It is very common to see security agencies in Nigeria break every known traffic rule and regulation for the fun of it.
The Tide thinks that the FRSC must summon the courage to contain the excesses of these overzealous security personnel, many times on illegal duties, by  subjecting them to this psychiatric examination and by so doing, send an unmistakable signal to everyone else that it means business.
The Corps, on its own part, must ensure that its officers and men rise above board and not see this as an avenue for extortion and other corrupt practices at the expense of the general good.
Indeed, this latest move and other measures adopted by the FRSC to bring sanity on our roads and highways cannot achieve the desired result without the cooperation of all Nigerians, especially the security agencies and high level government officials. We, therefore, advocate synergy between and among all government agencies to this end.
We also urge the FRSC to sanitise the process of issuing driver’s licences to ensure that only adequately tested and confirmed individuals are certified to drive on our roads. In this regard, we enjoin the Corps to regulate the establishment of driving schools and set standards for them.
No doubt, the job of stemming the ugly tide of carnage on our roads is a collective responsibility of all road users in Nigeria. All hands must therefore be on deck to ensure that the FRSC succeeds as it tackles the human inputs to road crashes, while we also urge the authorities to fix the death traps that are our roads across the country.