Africa-Press – Uganda. Road safety activists and civil society organisations have been urged to extend their gospel of awareness campaigns to constituencies outside Kampala to benefit motorists and road users countrywide.
This, the Kyamuswa County Member of Parliament, Mr Moses Kabusu, argued would help promote road safety at a time when road crashes are regarded as a global pandemic.
Mr Kabusu, who sits on the parliamentary forum for road safety, made the call during the launch of the traffic and road safety regulations addressing the key risk behavioural factors at Sheraton Hotel in Kampala on Wednesday.
“It is my humble call to you all that whereas there’s need to do a lot of sensitisation and dissemination in Kampala, can you leave Kampala and go and be felt in the countryside and different constituencies where we represent? The government may not have the money to carry out countrywide sensitisation but as stakeholders, you can supplement on the efforts of the ministry of works and transport and Uganda police that are in enforcement,” Kabusu said.
“Some programs have suffered budget suppression because of the laws we made a few months ago but the little resources you have can enable you hold engagements at regional or district levels so that motorists and road users benefit from the dissemination,” he added.
The revised regulations around key risk factors which include speed, alcohol use or drink-driving, child restraints, seatbelts and helmet use come after the Ministry of works and transport noticed new emerging issues and challenges, looking at recent traffic and road safety reports from police and the crime reports, al aimed at improving road safety.
Robert Kisakye, the Senior Licensing Officer at the ministry of works and transport said the government aimed at making some adjustments to include certain matters in the current regulations in order to improve key elements. For example, when you look at the helmet use, motorcyclists wear helmets without fastening them, something that is as good as not wearing one.
“Children were not previously catered for when it comes to seatbelts. We included child restraints to be sure that they are actually strapped properly, on top of all children having to sit in the rear seats of the car, not the front. Regarding speed, we needed to deal with calibration of enforcement gadgets such as speed guns and cameras and improving sanctions,” Kisakye said.
He added that; “For example, if you are driving in a 50km/hr zone and you are driving at 150km/hr, the impact you would have if you knocked a pedestrian would automatically be fatal. We want to remove this level of impunity to reduce fatalities because most crashes have lately been registered in trading centres, school zones and market zones. We are proposing to make a new speed limit for such zones to reduce from 50km/hr to 30km/hr.”
What you should also understand is that these revised regulations are embodied to work together. They do not only provide what you must do but they also provide for sanctions that will come in case you don’t comply. One of them is the point demerit system. For instance, there is the express penalty scheme that needed to be complimented.
“Every person that gets a new driving license will be issued with points. If you commit a scheduled offence, your points are deducted from the licence. If you reach 12 points, your license will be suspended for six months and this means you won’t drive. If your points drop to six, your suspension goes to one year and if you lose all the points, you are suspended from driving for two years. Scheduled traffic offences include speeding, drink driving, use of drugs, disobeying of traffic lights or anything that will have a great impact on road safety or the possibility of a crash.
For her part, Esther Sharon Busiku, the Road Safety Project Lead at Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA) observed that motorists caught violating traffic rules claim they are not aware of the various regulations under the law that address the different behavioral risk factors.
“It was necessary to officially make the public aware of the regulations that have been gazetted while working with government. We work with association heads such as truck drivers, motorcyclists and public service vehicle drivers because we believe they play a pivotal role in spreading the message to those they lead. Our goal is to see the road crash prevalence reduced and the revised regulations will guide in achieving this goal,” Busiku said.
Attended by different road safety sector players and convened by CEPA, the meeting was aimed at supporting the completing of the traffic and road safety regulations review process to provide implementation support. CEPA is currently implementing a road safety project entitled strengthening the road safety policy framework and its Implementation to address the key behavioural risk factors in Uganda.
Source: Monitor
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