Is A Road Crash An Accident?

ROAD SAFETY ARTICLE

According to Paul Wenham-Clarke, the term ‘incident’ rather than ‘accident’ best captures a road traffic crash. Paul further notes that road users will not truly understand the difference between ‘incident’ and ‘accident’ until the day when someone knocks at their door to give them devastating news of a loved one who died in a road traffic crash. An accident, he submitted, is something that could not have been prevented; it is one of those things that no one is to blame.

So, do you still think that the stories we read daily in the media about deaths and multiple injuries on our roads should still be termed incidents or accidents? Do you think a road crash is an accident or incident? While you are pondering on this question, I hope you remember that last week, I concluded by informing you that fatigue, which was once my focus on this same column, is believed to contribute to 10 per cent of all fatal crashes. Fatigue is a condition that comes on gradually and with clear warning signs, and cannot be considered unexpected.

This and other underlying behavioral tendencies underscore why in 2001, the British Medical Journal banned the use of the word ‘accident’ to avoid the connotation of unpredictability, since ‘most injuries and their precipitating events are predictably and preventable events’.

Some years ago, leading epidemiologists described the belief that injuries are accidents as the last folklore subscribed to by rational men. This again perhaps explains why Rita Taylor of the Road Peace Bristol Group, wonders why is it an ‘Accident’ when someone dies or is injured on our roads, arguing that someone actually took a decision to flout the laws. The laws flouted could be driving excessively above the approved speed limit or it could be driving and using the mobile phone despite its inherent risk. It could be driving impaired among other infractions that are committed at will by road users.

Please permit me to drive home this point by giving specific examples of some avoidable incidents in our clime and even others within the African continent beginning with the crash which occurred last week in Sierra Leone. According to media reports, more than 100 people were killed and more than 100 injured in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, late on Friday, 6th November, 2021. The report attributed the causative factor to a fuel tanker explosion following a collision.

According to the report, emergency workers worked to clear the scene of burnt bodies while the blackened shells of cars and motorbikes blocked the road following the crash. Victims of the crash included people who had flocked to collect fuel from the leaking vehicle. The National Disaster Management Agency described the incident thus; “It’s a terrible, terrible accident.”

Meanwhile, the crash further stretched Freetown’s health service battered by underfunding. Aside of underfunding, you will recall that during the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic, 250 of the country’s health workers died. To bridge this gap, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, as well as other NGO partners complimented with equipment, medical commodities and food while the World Health Organization sent supplies and deployed specialists in burn injuries.

Accidents with tanker trucks is a frequent occurrence and often kills scores of people who gather at the site to collect spilled fuel. In 2019, a tanker explosion in Tanzania killed 85 people, while around 50 people were killed in a similar disaster in Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018. The story in Nigeria is the same. Just on Wednesday, five were reported killed in a tanker crash that occurred at Ogere in Ogun State that was attributed to dangerous driving.

Besides this recent crash, available information reveals that in 2018,226 road traffic crashes were recorded killing 172 people. In 2019,285 road traffic crashes were recorded killing 201 people, in 2020 between January to November, 324 road traffic crashes were reported killing 226 people. The causative factors ranged from speed violation, break failure, wrongful overtaking, dangerous driving with the Lagos –Ibadan, Oyo-Ogbomosho, Benin –Ore, Auchi-Ewu and Kaduna-Abuja corridors as most pronounced. Between 2018 to 2020, a total of figure stands at 835 road traffic crashes involving tankers occurred killing, 599 deaths and 1948 injured.

On November 16, 2021 alone crash which occurred in Mokwa- Jebba road, Niger State killed eleven people while 37 were injured. While we were battling with the tragedy in Mokwa, another tragedy occurred on November 18 in the same Mokwa along the same Mokwa-Jebba road. Unlike the crash of November 16 which was a lone crash, the November 18 crash was a multiple crash involving two vehicles; a DAF 95 tanker and a Toyota Hiace bus. The crash which was caused by speeding and wrongful overtaking killed seven while nine sustained various degrees of injuries. So in a space of two days, two road traffic crashes claimed the lives of eighteen people within the same corridor and within the same State attributed to speed

The causative factor behind this crash was speed violation and loss of control. Incidentally, Niger State which is under my watch alongside the Federal Capital Territory is responsible for increased road traffic crashes within the Zone caused not just by the road conditions begging for government attention but the unrepentant attitude of drivers who transport human beings with cattle. Ironically, the driver of the crash which killed eleven people in Niger State fled the scene of the crash to escape the wrath of the mourners. These snippets of reported crashes and their causative factors pictures the reasons experts believe they are avoidable and therefore cannot and should not be classified as accidents which could not have been prevented.