Last Updated on: 20th December 2022, 01:36 pm
Uganda roads are contributing to the death rates with recent and past incidents seeing dozens of people passing on in road crashes.
Available reports show that at least 10 people die daily as a result of road crashes, most of whom are in their productive ages.
According to a Police Traffic and Road Safety report, road crashes are caused by many factors.
Read more here: Ugandan roads continue to kill users
From East to West, Central to North, crashes are being registered. This, as a result, is also damaging critical road infrastructures.
A road crash is for everyone.
In a statement released on Monday, the spokesperson of the directorate of traffic and road safety at the Uganda Police, ASP Faridah Nampiima officially announced a road crash that claimed the lives of a legislator and his wife.
Nampiima said the cause of the crash that killed the Serere County MP, Patrick Okabe and his wife Christine Okabe was the Isuzu box body driver who drifted from his side to the side of the MP’s Landcruiser.
“The territorial police at Budaka has today 19th December 2022 at around 7 am, registered a fatal accident, at Naboa Town Council along the Mbale-Tirinyi Road, involving motor vehicle reg no UBK 995F, & Isuzu box body registration number KCX 071K, killing on spot..”
She revealed that the Landcruiser was coming from Mbale and heading to Iganga.
“The driver of the Fuso box body is on the run.”
The driver, only identified as Jacob, remains in critical condition at Mbale regional referral hospital, she added.
What are the authorities doing?
In what seems to be far from delivering a Christmas and New Year message, the minister of works and transport, General Katumba Wamala is expected to address the nation on road crashes.
The ministry’s head of communication, Susan Kakaike said Tuesday morning that the minister will make the address on the same day at 2:30 pm
National Road Safety Action Plan for Uganda: 2021 to 2026
In the report’s foreword, Edward Katumba-Wamala acknowledged that the number of crashes and crash fatalities on roads remains unacceptably high, with an estimated 12,589 and 4159 respectively as reported in the Annual Traffic and Crime Report by the Uganda Police Force (UPF) in 2021.
More than half of these fatalities are among vulnerable road users: pedestrians, passengers, cyclists and motorcyclists. Improving safety on our roads is, therefore, critically important for us to achieve sustainable development and the fight against poverty.
“Government is committed and has already started the implementation of several interventions to address road safety in collaboration with other stakeholders. The National Road Safety Action Plan has been developed in consultation with all relevant stakeholders to set out a coordinated effort for the implementation of road safety interventions for the next five years, as a guiding tool geared at contributing to the prevention and reduction of road crashes by 25%,” he said as captured in the National Road Safety Action Plan.
Also, according to a United Nations Economic Commissions for Europe (UNECE) and Africa (ECA) report of 2018, the number of road traffic fatalities reported in Uganda had (has) increased seven-fold over the past 25 years.
The agency says Uganda urgently needs to move from Policy to Action to Improve Road Safety.