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The Overlooked Killer
Corruption raises the traffic risks, too. Abu Moune, a veteran Addis Ababa taxi driver, says there are too many unskilled drivers because anyone "can easily pay a bribe to get a driver's license, without passing a test at all." When Moune was hit by a drunken driver last September, police let the offender go: "There is no fine. Drunk-driving laws are not enforced."
A few governments are trying to stop the mayhem. When a 1996 World Bank report put Rwanda on a list of the most-dangerous driving nations, Kigali enacted a raft of new rules. It cut speed limits by 20kph (from 60), required motorcyclists to wear helmets, made the licensing test much harder and imposed huge fines for driving without a seat belt—nearly 20 percent of a civil servant's monthly salary. The government also sent a message by firing nearly 100 officers caught waiving fines for bribes. The crackdown angered truckdrivers from neighboring countries, but that was a good sign. Road fatalities have fallen by more than 30 percent since Kigali imposed the new traffic regime.
Others could do more. The G8 club of leading industrial nations has earmarked $1.2 billion for road development in sub-Saharan Africa, but only about 0.5 percent gets spent on safety, says Avi Silverman, a spokesman for the Make Roads Safe Campaign. Countries that use this money to build faster roads without training drivers and pedestrians, or taking any other basic safety steps, will reap the predictable death tolls.
With Jason McLure in Addis Ababa
© 2008
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Member Comments
Posted By: surafel @ 04/09/2008 10:57:31 AM
Comment: The Rwandans acted very quickly and minimized the fatal road accident. But in Ethiopia road accident is still a big killer. Except for traffic safety programme aired on Ethiopian radio to educate drivers and pedestrians and occasional traffic lessons offered by the traffic police in churches, schools etc.. other well coordinated and government supported measures are not in place.The government must reformulate its traffic rules.It has to strengthen its rule execution capacity. It need to increse the number of
traffic police and also their salary.The roads must be manitained and expanded. And above all the
government has to ban importing old vehicles from the nearby middle east countries. A responsible
government always take care the safety of its citizens.
of the safety of its citizens.
Posted By: nawawimohamad @ 04/07/2008 3:14:34 AM
Comment: The more accidents the better because the destroyed buses would be replaced with new ones (hopefully) and the bad drivers will be phased out naturally. Just let them die. It will help reduce the problem. The accident victims should be considered as collateral damage.