Director of Training, Research and Education at the Motor Transport and Traffic Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Alexander Kwaku Obeng, has disclosed that road accidents in the first quarter of the year shot up to 2,928, giving it a marginal increase of 0.86% as compared to 2,903 in the last quarter of last year.

DSP Obeng disclosed this last Thursday, April 6, 2017 on an Accra-based radio station, Eezy FM in Accra.

According to him, statistics showed that between the last quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year, road accidents reported and investigated increased by a margin of 0.86%, putting the number of vehicles involved in these accidents at 2.17%.

He noted that pedestrians who were involved in these accidents were either standing on the shoulders of or were just being knocked down by vehicles. These cases, he further revealed, shot up from 696 to 895, thus giving it a marginal increase of 28.59% while pedestrians who got injured and died as a result of that rose from 508 to 530.

He stated that by all indicators, the country was not doing well in the area of health and safety on “our roads, and called on government to put in place measures to deal with the situation.

On abuse of sirens and horns by some security personnel, DSP Obeng said under the Road Traffic Regulations 2012 regulation 74, 165, 166 and 167, certain institutions such as the ministries of health and security and national ambulance services are mandated to use sirens and horns for emergency purposes.

He stated that some sirens can only be used during emergency cases including transferring patients from hospitals, threat of fire, moving VIPS like the president or when persuading a violator of the law.

“However, these vehicles are not to use the sirens and the horns when they are returning from carrying out these emergencies or when they have been relieved of their duties,” he added.