The National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) has revealed that road traffic crashes cost the nation GH¢948, 224 million representing 1.6 percent of the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Mrs May Obiri-Yeboah, Director of Planning and Programmes at the NRSC, made the disclosure at the 44th Annual Conference of the Ghana Institution of Engineers held in Takoradi. She was presenting a paper entitled; “Sustaining the Enforcement of the Regulation on Distractive Driving; The Use of Mobile Phones in Ghana”.

She said driver error contributed about 80 percent of all road traffic crashes in the country with driver inattentiveness representing 28.1%, over-speeding 24.8% and lost-steering-control 23.4%.

Explaining distractive driving, Mrs Obiri-Yeboah said it involved diversion of one’s attention from driving due to temporary focusing on an object thereby reducing one’s awareness, decision-making and performance thus resulting in near-crashes. She reminded motorists that the new legislative Instrument (L.I. 2180, Regulation 107) prohibited the use of mobile phones while driving and urged the law enforcement agencies to enforce the law in order to reduce road fatalities.

Mrs Obiri-Yeboah mentioned instances which could result in road crashes as one checking kids’ seat-belt while driving, talking to other passengers or being preoccupied with family or work related issues.

She said studies revealed that drivers using mobile phones were approximately four times more likely to be involved in a crash because it could impair their performances on a number of driving tasks. She said globally, 1.3 million people were killed annually, 3,500 killed daily while 50 million got injured, saying if the trend continued, by 2030, road traffic crashes would rise from being the ninth cause of death to fifth.

Mrs Obiri-Yeboah said in developing countries, road accidents cost nations between 1-3 percent of their GDP. She indicated that 11,400 people crashed annually in third world countries, including Ghana with 2,000 fatalities, 14,000 injuries while six were killed on daily basis.

She urged all stakeholders in the road sector to put their hands on deck to educate motorists and other road users to adhere strictly to road safety regulations to save precious lives.