By: ROTIMI ASHER
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ver speeding due to speed limit violation has been identified as a major factor responsible for 80% of fatal accidents that happened in Nigeria. Assistant Corps Marshal and Zonal Commanding Officer, Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC) Zone RS2, Lagos, Nseobong Akpabio, gave this revelation recently during an exclusive interview with Motoring World in his Zonal office, Lagos.
The figure, according to Akpabio, was arrived at after conducting a research.
“Even today,” he explained, “the fact on ground shows that almost 80% of fatal crashes in the country are caused by speed limit violation whether commercial or private vehicles.”
To control the situation, according to Akpabio, FRSC held various consultations with stakeholders over installation of speed limit device to ensure that crashes are reduced to the barest minimum.
“So, after series of stakeholders consultations for over one year plus,” he explained, “all stakeholders agreed that based on the indices available, there is need for us to jointly tackle this issue and the best way to do it is to commence installation of speed limit device in commercial vehicles.”
On why the corps decided to commence the installation of the device with commercial vehicles, he said, FRSC management considered the fact that commercial vehicles carry large percentage of passengers and goods.
“If there is a crash, there will be mass casualties,” he pointed out.” Imagine a luxury bus with about 45 passengers on board traveling at a speed of 180 km per hour and there is a crash, nobody knows if any passenger will survive.
“We are not saying if it is a private vehicle and one person dies, we are happy. No, we want to curtail the excesses of this set of drivers.”
Akpabio assured that all things are being put in place to ensure full take-off of installation of the speed limiter in commercial vehicles.
He added: “Federal Government and other stakeholders are so keen about commencement of installation. Already, 38 vendors have been accredited by the government all over the country to do the installation.”
