By Oladele Ogunsola /Ibadan
Within the first seven weeks of the 'Ember Months', (September to December) this year, no fewer than 41 persons had died in road crashes in Oyo State, the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) has disclosed.
This was made known on Wednesday by the FRSC Sector Commander, Godwin Ogagaoghene, at the 2013 Ember Months Road Safety Awareness Campaign in Ibadan where he told the gathering that the deaths were recorded out of 49 crashes and in which 262 persons suffered various degrees of injuries.
The FRSC lamented that the figure was an increase of 8.9 per cent in road traffic crash, 26 per cent in the number of persons injured and 24 per cent in the number of persons killed over last year's figure, a trend he described as an unhealthy and unacceptable that "we must all rise to combat.
"This is not the making of any spirit being; there are no extraterrestrial beings that are responsible for crashes, rather crashes are as a result of our attitude on the road," he said.
Ogagaoghene reiterated that the theme for the campaign was 'Attitude: The Change We Need on Our Roads', stressing that it was selected due to the fact that it had been discovered that most of the traffic crashes could have been avoided if the drivers involved considered change of attitude before they found themselves behind the wheel.
According to him, "Most crashes on our roads can be ascribed to the attitude of the drivers behind the wheel".
The Commander of the FRSC Zone 11, L. S. Kinya, in his view, identified excessive speed, drunk driving, use of phone while driving, over loading, failure to obey road traffic signs and rules, poor vehicle maintenance as some of the major causes of road traffic crashes.
He disclosed that in an effort at bringing sanity on the roads, the FRSC was planning to introduce 'speed limiters' into vehicles through appropriate legislation and expressed hope that this would assist in reducing the rate of crashes caused by excessive speeding.
