SOME 17 people, many of them women, perished in two separate accidents between Tuesday and Wednesday raising alarm on the state of the country’s major roads.
It is sad that so many Zimbabweans still die on our roads, often as a result of a very poor road network and inexperienced public transport drivers many of whom do not even have defensive driver’s licences.
Thousands of people lose their lives through road accidents annually. The accidents on the country’s roads not only cause deaths, but also injury and losses amounting to millions of dollars. Besides, thousands of man hours are lost during the recovery period of injured people.
What is even disturbing is the fact that most of the victims could be family heads and this means that their families’ lives will never be the same again. Yet, the majority of crashes on our roads are preventable.
Police said the major cause of the two accidents in which both drivers died was speeding. The police in their statement urged motorists to avoid speeding and to approach road curves with caution. They also urged passengers to report speeding drivers to police officers and if possible stop boarding such public service vehicles.
The reason being Zimbabwe cannot continue to lose innocent productive lives. We urge the police to decisively deal with traffic offenders and errant public transport drivers. We cannot fathom the idea of losing more lives on our roads due to delinquent drivers, police ineffectiveness or corruption on the roads.
There is also need for Transport minister Obert Mpofu to improve the country’s road network. Clearly, poor road safety culture and failure to strictly enforce traffic rules are chiefly to blame for the high accident casualty rate across the country as shown in the two accidents this week.
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It is unfortunate that road accidents are now killing more people than tuberculosis and malaria in developing nations.They are the leading cause of death among young people –the most productive age group, killing more youths than HIV and Aids in the country. Regrettably, some people are maimed for life.
It appears that another reason for the high number of accidents in the country has been lack of heavy penalties for offenders and corruption by traffic cops on the country’s roads.
There is, therefore, great need to nip the vice in the bud to save lives and the country’s economy which stands to lose even more going forward. There should be stricter laws, which if implemented to the letter, should force motorists to become more disciplined and reduce road accidents.
We also call on the police to be more diligent even if it means impounding unroadworthy vehicles and keeping them off of our roads to protect other road users. Public transport drivers should always have refresher courses so that they are able to value people’s lives.
One wonders why in the Marondera accident the driver wanted to overtake a motionless vehicle. Common sense should have told the driver to stop and check for oncoming vehicles. The driver was just reckless, and these are the people that our courts should severely deal with even if it means sending them to jail assuming they would have survived the accident.
More so, the police should ensure that all unroadworthy vehicles and uncertified drivers are severely punished to serve as a reminder to like-minded individuals.
