I have read that the Government of Kenya (GOK) is in the processing of introducing a system that will require me to be retrained and retested to see if I am a competent driver before they issue me with a new smart driving license. This document will supposedly keep track of my incidents, accidents and transgressions with the information being shared by a host of interested parties the police, KRA and my insurance company amongst others as like the rest of officious Kenya they continue to make my life a living hell.
The plan also calls for the sending of a summons by email and SMS to appear in court if the traffic cameras catch your car jumping the traffic lights or committing any other traffic offence complete with a picture of the vehicle registration number and the facial snap shot of the offending driver. As the story is silent on how other road users shall be disciplined – pedestrians,cyclists and mkokoteni pushers – I wonder if the same measure of punishment shall be meted out to them also?
The plan also calls for the purchase of tablet computers to be used by the police officers when they catch up with you for them to swipe your license and get all the details of who you are, where you stay and other such information as well as all the muck on your erratic and undisciplined driving manners.If this initiative is all about reducing the carnage on our roads caused by drivers who bribed their way into getting their mug shots on a license document, or just bought the damn document then this is all very well. If this issue wasn’t so serious, this latest attempt by the GOK to force some semblance of discipline into the driving public in Kenya would be downright laughable.
Stay with me for a moment and get to understand the folly of this initiative honorable sounding as it may seem. First and foremost it pre-supposes that accidents are caused ONLY by undisciplined and careless vehicular drivers. The fact of the matter is that this statement is probably largely true. However a quick drive around any road in any part of the country today, including some of the new super highways and bypasses will tell a completely different story. Some of these roads were not meant to be driven on as dual carriage way roads being mostly too thin with no road shoulders, no cycling paths and no pedestrian footpaths.
This means that pedestrians, cyclists and the odd ‘mkokoteni’ are sharing the road with cars, matatus, trucks and buses dicing dangerously with death weaving and cutting in and out of traffic as all seek to get ahead of everyone else at the expense of the rest! The super highways and bypasses to my untrained eye are not well designed either, with dangerous intersections, overpasses and underpasses as well as blind exit lanes, no working street lights and for the most part filthy and unkempt road surfaces where again cyclists, pedestrians and the odd ‘mkokoteni’ criss cross the roads dangerously sometimes against the flow of traffic and at non-existent crossing points and oblivious to their own fate!
The GOK has said that they shall initially target the 25,000 PSV drivers who would surely put any motorist in any country in the world to shame with their dangerous and death defying antics which is all well save for the fact that these are also the most adept and brazen givers of bribes on our roads today so that a vehicle with tyres as smooth as a baby’s bottom will be deemed fit to continue plying on the roads in his death trap of a vehicle so long as the correct amount of bribe has been paid to the traffic policeman that had the audacity to stop that vehicle in the first place……and before anyone is unduly harsh on my judgement of the police department, I am not the one who ranks them consistently corrupt year in year out!!
So if these are the same people expected to reign in the trouble makers on our roads then what will have changed? What is to prevent the police officer from accepting a bribe in lieu of adding another transgression on a driving license when the offending driver is on the brink of losing his driving privileges for good? What is to stop the police officer from accepting a bribe so as not to swipe your card on the tablet reader which shall show that you are using your brothers license yours having been suspended months back?
The cost of bribery is going to go up, the rate of accidents shall remain at the same level so long as the same indiscipline targeting motorists is not extended to the pedestrians and cyclists with a death wish and who therefore walk anywhere they feel like safe in the knowledge that an accident is always caused by a motorist and never by a pedestrian.
So long as the state of the roads in the country remains the same – shambolic, dangerous and with ill-conceived interchanges and lacking the basic road infrastructure to make them safe then the rate of accidents shall remain the same.
It will take a multi-faceted approach involving disciplining of all road users and due care and diligence from the engineers that design our roads before an effective solution is found to end the carnage!!
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