A Step Toward Safer Roads: RSA Launches Expert Investigation into Toyota Voxy Incidents
A group of road safety specialists has been assembled by the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) to look into the recent wave of collisions involving Toyota Voxy cars being used for commercial purposes..
The technical working committee was established in response to the nation’s rising traffic accident rate, which hit a record high last year.
2,949 people were killed in documented traffic accidents nationwide last year alone, the most in 35 years.
Abraham Amaliba, the Director-General of the NRSA, said at the inauguration of a technical committee yesterday that the committee was expected to look into and determine what was causing the worrying trend of Toyota Voxy vehicles being involved in traffic accidents on a regular basis.
The committee is expected to analyze crash data and road safety trends involving Toyota Voxy vehicles, determine whether the vehicles are suitable for commercial use on Ghanaian roads, investigate whether switching from right-hand drive to left-hand drive contributes to crashes, and offer suggestions to improve road safety.
The Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), the Ghana Road Transport Coordinating Council (GRTCC), the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), Toyota Ghana, and the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) are among the important state and non-state organizations represented on the committee looking into the phenomenon, which is chaired by Dr. Godwin Kafui Ayetor, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
Mr Amaliba assured members of the committee that their work would be religiously implemented to safeguard the country’s roads. “We are giving the committee one month within which to present the report because the issue of road crashes is like a red-hot potato that needs to be dealt with. We will not cover up the findings of this report because it is of interest to the people of Ghana and they must know,” he stressed.
He clarified that the assessment will decide whether those cars were suitable for use in business settings.
Mr. Amaliba emphasised that the authority, which oversees the road sector, was worried about the carnage on the road and will take decisive action “to exorcise that ghost”.
“They are more than the figures we saw during the COVID-19 period, but the whole country rallied to fight the pandemic,” he said, adding that the numbers were more than just numbers—they were human lives.Although many people are killed in a single traffic accident, road safety does not appear to be a top priority.
