Twelve (12) people have perished, whilst seven others are in critical condition after two buses collided on the Buipe-Tamale highway.

The eleven died on the spot, including an eight-year-old girl at the accident scene at Alipe in the Central Gonja District of the Savannah Region on Tuesday, April 13, 2021, at around 7:30 pm.

A Toyota minibus with registration number AS 2872-20 reportedly veered off its lane and collided head-on with a DAF tipper truck with registration number NR 578 loaded with sand. There were 18 persons on board travelling from Tamale to Kumasi.

The driver of the minibus was one of the people who died on the spot.

The driver of the DAF tipper truck could not survive and died the next day after being rushed to the hospital together with others who were seriously injured.

The wounded were sent to the Yapei Health Center and later conveyed by ambulance to the Tamale Teaching Hospital for treatment whilst the deceased persons were deposited at the same hospital mortuary for preservation and autopsy.

Savannah Regional Police PRO, Inspector Owusu Adjekum, who confirmed the accident explained it was raining at the time resulting in poor visibility.

“If you are a driver driving at night under such conditions, you have to slow down or even park the vehicle, but this driver did not take precautionary measure and was speeding,” he complained.

29 road fatalities on Tamale-Buipe road in the first quarter

The latest accident brings fatalities on that stretch to 29 from January to March 2021. A road crash in February killed 17 passengers and injured 44 others early Wednesday, February 3.

A police statement said the accident occurred when two passenger buses travelling opposite directions collided head-on at a town near Buipe, a community along the Kumasi-Tamale highway.

Sixteen persons died on the spot, while one more died at a hospital where the injured were receiving treatment. The deceased included 12 males, five females, and one child.

The accident involved two buses with registration numbers GT 3345-16 and AC 1699-20.

They were travelling from Kumasi to Zebila and from Garu to Kumasi, respectively, when they ran into each other.

Commenting on the development, Inspector Adjekum said Tamale to Buipe has the first-class road without curves and a “driver who gets on the road try to test his or her car” by overspeeding.

He, therefore, appealed to transport unions to educate drivers on overspeeding and observe road traffic regulations.

2021 accident mortalities exceed COVID-19 deaths

A total of 771 persons have died through road accidents for the first quarter of 2021.

This surpassed the COVID-19 related deaths of 752 at the end of the same period. The figure, according to the Ghana Police Service, is a significant increase in the 393 cases recorded in the same period 2020.

Out of the 771 deaths recorded, the Ashanti region recorded the highest, with 171 deaths with 1,064 injured, followed by the Greater Accra region, 146 deaths, and 732 injuries.

Central, Savannah, Bono, and Upper East regions respectively follow in terms of the number of casualties while the North East Region recorded only 3 deaths.

2020 accidents

The country recorded the highest road traffic fatalities in the last 30 years due to increasing motorcycle accidents in 2020.

Motorcycle accidents contributed approximately 40% to the total deaths in the last year. Provisional data for 2020 showed that 2,589 lives were lost to road crash across the country despite movement restrictions due to COVID-19. This figure represents a 13% rise compared to the 2,284 registered in 2019.

It was also consistent with high fatalities associated with election years as citizens hit the polls in December 2020.

Road fatalities in 2020 is the highest in the last three decades.