TRUCK DRIVERS AND ROAD SIGNS
Hello my amazing readers! I know its being a while I posted an article am so sorry, its because i have being off for a while on a field research in fulfillment of my academic thesis. However here I am again with some amazing discovery i got on the field and I will sharing some on this platform with you.
I noticed over the years that accidents involving heavy duty trucks have always been catastrophic in terms of economic loss, obstruction to traffic and human lives, so i decided to look into “Truck Drivers’ Knowledge of Road Signage”, so as to ascertain the level of understanding of these signs and to further see how we can improve their knowledge for the overall safety of road users.
Statistics released by the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics (NBS 1st quarter of 2017), shows that over 60% of the overall causes of road accidents are directly or indirectly related to disobedience of road signs or lack of knowledge of the road signs.
It is also important to note that Heavy duty trucks accidents make up 17.3% of the total vehicle involvement in road crashes between January — March 2017 with Trucks having 452 crashes, trailers 167 crashes and tankers 92 crashes out of the total number of 4103 crashes involving various vehicle types. I can categorically state that the level of destruction in terms of material and human lives caused by the heavy duty trucks cannot be compared with other vehicle types.
The Lagos State Vehicle Inspection Service, the Department of Planning and Research also released a report for 2013–2016, it shows that trucks that are involved in road accidents in Lagos State are 250 for year 2013; 275 for year 2014; 106 year 2014 and 137 for year 2016. In the same period of years Lagos state witnessed road accidents by trailers for year 2013: 129, year 2014: 114, year 2015: 55 and year 2016: 64. For tankers, it is 60 for year 2013, 66 for year 2014, 26 for year 2015 and 41 for year 2016. It is important to point out that out that of the total of 6781 road accidents caused by various types of vehicles the Heavy duty trucks which make up trucks, trailers and tankers accounts for 1322 of the figures. That’s makes it 19.4% of the total from year 2013–2016.
However, my findings shows that understanding of regulatory signs is “fair” but not good enough because 100% understanding of the road signs is required to ensure safety on the road. For Prohibitory signs , “fair” , traffic light signals “good” and Warning signs , “poor”.
Warning signs is a very unique sets of signs because they tell you what is ahead of you and the need to take “caution” but it is extremely shocking that “truck drivers” do not know much about it. This could explain the reason why we have higher rate of accidents on our major roads, something urgent needs to be done to improve the understanding of the signs to 100%.
My appeal to government institutions i.e the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), the Nigerian Police, the Vehicle Inspection Service (VIS), Private individuals, companies etc is to put more effort and invest through Cooperate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the advocacy of road traffic signs most especially amongst heavy duty trucks across Nigeria so that via such platform we can reduce road accident caused by heavy duty trucks by over 50% and will be able to meet the global target by the United Nations “Decade of Action for Road Safety” by the year 2020.
On my part i have started an online advocacy platform on twitter and Instagram so that you can learn road traffic signs on the go and other safety tips. Thanks and kindly follow @9jaTrafficSigns
