Accra, May 9, GNA - The Road Safety and Environment Division (RSED) of the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) on Tuesday called on advertising agencies to re-locate their bill boards nine meters away from the edge of all high speed roads.

Mr Clement K. Vasco, Director of the RSED, said this is to ensure that "we maintain the standardised nine meters wide clear zones along the high speed carriage ways to prevent fatalities in the event of a vehicle skidding off the road." He said: "we might therefore have to smash some of the bill boards by the high speed roadways since they constitute a violation to warnings we always give to advertising agencies who apply to place bill boards by the roads."

Mr Vasco was speaking at a day's seminar on Road Safety and the Environment organised by the GHA to assess and improve upon the current situation of safety and environmental aspects of trunk roads.

The seminar was attended by over 60 participants from the various departments in the national transport sector and representatives from collaborative agencies such as the World Bank, Environmental Protection Agency and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA.).

The occasion was also to formally inaugurate the RSED, which will advise the GHA management on safety and environment measures prior to the implementation of construction plans, This is to protect public investment in roads.

Mr Vasco noted that the RSED have made recommendations to GHA to ensure that road constructors demarcate nine meter wide clear zones in all future road construction plans.

These zones would be clear of bill boards, trees and any structure, to prevent a crash and ensure the safety of life and property in the event of an accident resulting from a mechanical fault, or carelessness.

"We would also ensure that applications for the construction of structures, bill boards and planting of trees by the roads, are only approved on the grounds that they carry a commitment to maintain the clear zone standard."

Mr Vasco, however, said that structures, trees and bill boards placed behind crash barriers along the roads, as is the case in the major cities, would be maintained, while measures would be put in place to check any further location of structures close to roads.

In a speech read on his behalf, Mr. Bashiru L. T. Sakibu, Chief Executive of the GHA, said since the improvement of the 13,245-kilometre trunk road network under the GHA, there has been a significant increase in road accidents.

He said it is estimated that 60 per cent of vehicles that are involved in road accidents run off the roads into ditches, embankments or tree, culverts, headwalls and streams among others.

"Further an estimated 30 per cent of these accidents are fatal, due to human, mechanical and road design as well road side environmental factors." Mr Sakibu said the RSED is, therefore to ensure that roads are environmentally friendly, adding that the division is to initiate and enforce measures to control lawless activities such as overloading, speeding, parking of heavily loaded vehicles on the roads for long hours, which destroy the roads.

The RSED would also work in close collaboration with the Ghana Private Road Transport Union, Customs, Excise and Preventive Service, Vehicle Examination and Licensing Division (VELD) of the Ministry of Roads and Transport as well as the Police to ensure that only road worthy vehicles drive on the trunk roads.

Dr Alfred Addo-Abedi, Deputy Director of GHA in charge of Development who presided, said road accidents cost developing countries, including Ghana, about two per cent of GDP.

This hampers economic development, apart from the pain and suffering that victims and their families go through. He said it is, therefore, necessary for stakeholders in the road industry to take a closer look at the issue of safety and environmental friendliness of roads.

Mr Justice Amegashie, Acting Chief Executive VELD, said pedestrian fatality rates constitute 45 per cent of the total fatalities in the country. He, therefore, expressed the hope that the issue of pedestrian safety would constitute a major aspect of efforts towards road safety and environmental friendliness under the RSED.