Pedestrians and passenger deaths in the country account for 65 per cent of all road traffic casualties in Ghana, Mrs May Obiri-Yehoah, Executive Director National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), has said.

She said 60 per cent of crashes that lead to massive road accidents are speed related.

Mrs Obiri Yeboah was speaking at a forum to share ideas on how best road accidents could be reduced and deliver significant improvement in the road safety situation in the short to the medium term.

The forum, was organised by NRSC in collaboration with the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GIE) on the theme, “Improving road safety; engineering opportunities and challenges.”

The participants discussed clear strategies and measures that would improve road safety and ensure reduction of persons killed and persons injured by 50 per cent.

Mrs Obiri Yeboah said the issue of road safety management is becoming complex and could only be well managed if contractors would consider education, engineering, enforcement and emergency services for the safety of users.

She said crash statistics indicated that 38 per cent of pedestrian is the most vulnerable road user because of the absence of user facilities such as walk way footbridges, pelican lights, zebra crossings among others.

She said the NRSC had in their agenda 2020, plans to promote greater commitment, responsibility and dedication among road safety stakeholders, improve public transport system and manage speeds on roads in the cities and highways.

“This will help improve knowledge and skills among road users to change behaviour and improve enforcement strategies,” she said.

The initiative, she said could not be achieved through education alone and called for the full complement of other stakeholders such as the Ghana Institution of Engineers, Drivers and Vehicular Licensing Authority (DVLA), Ghana Private Road and Private Transport Union (GPRTU) among others to ensure road safety.

Dr Kwame Boakye, President GIE said road safety value chain, was the work of the engineers and asked engineers to contribute to the five pillars of road safety which aimed at improving road safety management, safer roads, safe vehicles, improved road user behaviour and enforcement and improve post-crash-response.

Dr Boakye stated that, in accident prevention, the engineer needs to develop measures that inhibit accidents occurring.

He urged them to always conduct road safety and user audits on all new facilities, including existing ones.

In many parts of the world, and for the past few decades have demonstrated that effective and comprehensive road safety strategies could reduce the number of people being killed or injured despite increasing traffic levels.

It is thus, important that modern road safety strategies such as implementation of measures to improve road safety for users and road maintenance features be provided to focus on preventing serious injury and death from vehicle crashes despite human errors.

Mr David Osafo Adonteng, Director of Planning and Programmes, cautioned drivers to be disciplined and abide by all speed limit signage on roads to curtail the situation.

He said over speeding was the root cause of all the evils on the roads and that it high time much attention be paid to this for lasting solutions.