Bidemi and The Symphony of Deaths

She was cute and beautiful. Young and promising. Her life was like a script crafted in heaven and delivered through mother Earth. Bidemi (not her real name). Call her lucky or favored and you would not be far from the truth about her life. Hers was not just about beauty without brains as she equally had good education where she dusted all in her class with a First Class Degree.

Life seemed smooth and easy for her. Even after graduating and completing her compulsory National Youth Service Corp, destiny preferred her out among her peers as she didn’t have to wait for long to be engaged as a staff in a thriving and promising business outlet. Like every young girl her age, she met her dream man and got pregnant. Both agreed to live their dreams and fantasy. They met their families and set a wedding date to consummate her lifelong dream of becoming a mother and a wife.

Tragedy, however, struck barely a few months to the set day. Bidemi, whose beauty shone the more with the pregnancy, set out on a journey in a commercial vehicle. On the journey, a crash occurred, claiming her life and that of her unborn child, leaving behind traumatised families. Bidemi was an only child whose parents had made sacrifices for, hoping for a better tomorrow. With her dead, their dreams and aspirations died with her. Bidemi’s story is one of the numerous tragedies on our roads. Daily, crashes occur, killing, maiming and leaving behind traumatized loved ones, families and sometimes children with no one to care for them.

Bidemi for the records was one of the victims of the road traffic crash which occurred on September 9, 2023 at Oluyole along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. According to reports on the crash, two vehicles; a Toyota Hiace bus and a trailer were involved in the crash which occurred at about 0330hrs. The causative factors were speed violation and loss of control.

The irony of this crash is that out of the 17 people involved in the crash, all 17 died with some burnt beyond recognition. A similar crash occurred on October 8, 2023 at about 1155hours at Sorodaya in Tsanyawa Local Government Area of Kano State. Speed and loss of control were again the causative factors. Like the Oluyole crash, this crash was also a multiple crash involving a Peugeot and a truck. Out of six people involved, five were killed while one sustained injuries.

I do not wish to bore you with a series of crashes nationwide but to however remind you of the need for caution. Meanwhile, just before I set out to do this piece, I stumbled on a report by one of the media houses titled; Ember Months: Concerns over spike of road accidents. The report cited the Corps spokesman, Bisi Kazeem and reeled out statistics of crashes, death and injuries as released by the Corps.

I know that I had focused on the Ember months’ challenges with a different slant hoping that readers will pick a lesson or two, as well as assist in educating other road users on the need for precaution. For starters, the annual global scourge of road crashes, according to the World Health Organization’s report, accounts for 1.3 million deaths. The report in our clime despite increased motorization   among other factors is about 5000 plus deaths annually.

This explains why for 2023, we set the strategic goal of cutting down road crashes deaths, as well as injuries by 5 percent .With just about two months to wrap up 2023, we are still hopeful of hitting the target. This will happen only if and if motorists buy into our numerous campaign slogans. One of these slogans is the one I heard when I attended a conference some years ago where a guest speaker   harped on the need for safety precautions noting that the best safety device in a vehicle is a trained driver.

The driver who killed Bidemi or the other driver in the second road crash cited earlier would probably have saved her and other occupants if only these two drivers or their employers had taken the pain to properly train them. Such a training would have taught them that a brake applied on a speeding vehicle would result in a possible crash and loss of life. Secondly, excessive speed thrills but kills.

It is ironic that despite the huge amount people spend buying and showing off with the latest machine (car), very few also bother to properly train their drivers in the modern driving techniques such as defensive driving techniques. Except the multinational companies, rarely do establishments regard drivers as laborers who deserve continuous training and re-training.

This is the high point of the driving school standardization programme introduced by the Corps as part of measures to change the face of driving in the Country. The programme makes it compulsory for all fresh applicants for a driver’s license to undergo compulsory training in one of the certified driving schools in the Country. To give credence to this novelty which was a departure from what obtained previously, driving schools were certified while instructors are properly tutored on modern techniques.   

The snippet of two speed related crashes that I have cited is not just peculiar to Nigeria but cuts across other parts of the globe including the developed and low as well as middle income countries especially Africa. I have treated excessive speed severally on this page. I have tried to remind people and road users of the provisions of the National Road Traffic Regulations, 2012 which specifies the speed limits on various roads, as well as speed limits of various categories of vehicles.

For reminders, the Regulations provide that the maximum speed in Nigeria is 100km/h. The same Regulations stipulates that 100km/h is the maximum speed for cars on the express while the limit for taxis and buses is 90km/h. The speed limit for articulated vehicles is 60km/h.

The same Regulations provide for the appropriate speed limit for built- up areas. It provides a maximum speed limit of 50km/h for cars, taxis and buses as well, tankers and trailers are to do 45km/h while tow vehicles are 45km/h while towing and 50km/h when not towing.

While the provisions explicitly spell out these rules, there are concerns that compliance is a challenge while these signs, according to some observers, are rarely seen on some of our roads. So what is excessive speed which accounted for the two fatalities? Excessive speed is speeding above the approved or posted speed limit on a particular road.

Inappropriate speed on the other hand is where the driver drives within the speed limit, but not for the conditions of the road. Please allow me to bring you up to speed with specific details of the World Health Organization and World Bank report which captures all the risks driving behaviours with excessive speed topping the list.

I need to dwell more on this so you can appreciate the enormity of excessive speeding. What I have chosen to do is to run the report verbatim so you will fully appreciate the work jointly done by WHO and the World Bank. The report notes that an increase in average speed, is directly related both to the likelihood of a crash occurring and to the severity of the consequences of the crash.

For example, every 1percent increase in mean speed, it notes, produces a 4percent increase in the fatal crash risk and a 3percent increase in the serious crash risk. It further states that the death risk for pedestrians hit by car front rises rapidly; 4.5 times from 50 km/h to 65 km/h. In car-to-car side impacts, the fatality risk for car occupants is 85percent at 65 km/h.