The National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), has intensified its passenger empowerment campaign on major highways to drastically reduce road fatalities before, during and after the Easter festivities.

The campaign is generally aimed at creating awareness on the need for the public, especially drivers, passengers and pedestrians to desist from acts that endangered their lives and that of others, during Easter.

Mrs May Obiri-Yeboah, Executive Director of the NRSC who led a team on an outreach programme in Cape Coast, encouraged passengers not to hesitate to report indiscipline drivers on the roads to the police.

She said passengers must ensure that drivers adhered to road safety regulations as the surest way to reduce the number of road fatalities in the region.

According to her, ensuring safety on the road was a shared and collective responsibility, and that it would be wrong if passengers failed to join the campaign to play their respective roles.

Mrs Obiri-Yeboah said, "we must collectively resolve to think safety in all our choices on the road and drive safely knowing that the families we leave behind count on us for their survival.”

"I encourage passengers not to hesitate to report drivers who misbehave on the road to the nearest police checkpoint to reduce road fatalities", she added.

The team interacted with passengers and commercial drivers at the Tantri main lorry station and also along the highways on the need to wear seat belts, check drivers against speeding and report suspected drunk drivers to authorities, before setting off on their journeys.

They also distributed a variety of road safety educational materials to drivers during the four-hour exercise and cautioned people who steal road safety signposts dotted along the major highways to desist from that “unpatriotic” practice.

She warned that anyone found to have contravened road safety regulations regardless of their status would be punished to serve as a deterrent to others.

Many of the passengers who spoke to the GNA lauded the campaign and called on the Commission to scale it up and also sustain it.