With great reluctance, this blogger revisits the subject of the continued rapacity of our nation's highways. In recent years, indeed in the past twelve months alone, the Executive has attempted various quick-fixes for the epidemic. The Traffic Act was amended and penalties for various traffic offences enhanced, sometimes to draconian limits. The Traffic Department of the National Police Service was slated for the chopping block, though no one is sure that would have contributed to finding lasting solutions to the epidemic. Mobile courts were launched with the aim of sorting out "minor" traffic offences on the spot. But, what do you know, the number of the dead and injured on the nation's highways has not demonstrated the likelihood of a downward trajectory; it has remained stubbornly pointed at the sky.
Road users, in case some of us have been misinformed, include pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists as well as road-side vendors, newspaper hawkers and the occasional herd of cows that wanders into the middle of the road. Road users are not restricted to motorists or Public Service Vehicles alone. This is one of the fatal assumptions that has contributed so much to the death and injury on our roads. It is, usually incorrectly, that road users comprise only of motorists, and excludes everyone else. To a great extent, the moribund City Council of Nairobi after it was done gutting all professionals from its perfidious hallways, set the pace in how we manage our roads, how we protect human life and how we protect property while using the city's roads.
Priority was given to the motorists; other road users received short shrift. This is demonstrated by the pitiful and pitiable state of pedestrian pavements, road-side dukas, pedestrian crossings, traffic control system, design and location of markets and other public amenities and facilities, and the studious, mulish determination to maximise the number of PSVs on the roads without expanding PSV facilities such as termini, stages or stops. In Nairobi City, the effects of these drip-drip-drip missteps are plain to see. Traffic congestion, especially during peak hours, has become legendary. Pedestrian knock-downs have risen steadily in the past decade. Fender-benders are a common sight these days. PSV "hooliganism" has became the bane of public transport. The numbers and diversity of road traffic accident victims have risen and widened.
Solutions proposed in the past seem to have failed to address the problems. One of the newer innovations has been the establishment of a National Transport Safety Authority whose purpose, among others, is to find ways of making transport in Kenya safer. It will overwhelmingly concentrate its energies on road transport; after all, it is our roads that are proving almost intractable problems to solve. Taking its cue from other "authorities", the NTSA will, perhaps it already has, schedule foreign junkets to study the extant problem; it will spend hundreds of millions on conferences and stakeholder workshops; its Board will be among the best paid in public service; it will issue annual report after annual report which will be read only by the truly dedicated. In other words, the NTSA will be one among a number of white elephants the government likes to saddle its people with every now and then in the name of problem-solving.
Road safety is a delicate dance by the National Executive, the County Executive, the National Police Service and road users. It is affected and influenced by the actions of trainers of motorists, the interpretation of the law by the Judiciary and the insurance policies of the insurance industry. If one of the partners in road safety does a bad job, it affects all of us.
The solution to our road safety challenges is not in ever harsher penalties for traffic offences or the creation of more white-elephant "authorities". It is not to be found in "speedy" justice through mobile courts either. It is a series of steps, each reinforcing the one that came before. First, enforcement of the traffic rules must be stringent. Second, driver education must be comprehensive. Third, all road-users must be made familiar with their duties, obligations, rights and privileges.Fourth, when we spend public funds, we must spend them too on public education that is constant and relentless. Fifth, road design should include both motorists and non-motorists and construction must follow the design. Finally, especially in urban areas and cities, the ratio of road-space, pedestrians, public transport capacity and traffic management must be calibrated so that a balance is struck between effective and efficient public transport and the number of licensed PSVs we have on our roads.
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