Oct. 11, 2023

…Says 69% of road crashes between Jan and Sept. were speed related

The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) is developing a new policy on pre-fitted Speed Limiting Device (SLD) on locally assembled and imported vehicles to further strengthened its campaign against speed related crashes across the country.

The Corps Public Education Officer, (CPEO) Assistant Corps Marshal (ACM) Bisi Kazeem said this in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja.

Kazeem said that the Corps was complying with the United Nations Decade of Action (2021-2030) on Safe System Approach to road safety.

This, he said was as adopted in the Nigeria Road Safety Strategy NRSS (2021-2030) and stipulated in pillar 2 which dealt with safer vehicles.

The FRSC spokesman said that the strategy aimed at applying technology that was cost effective and adoptable with capacity to regulate vehicle speed to a national threshold.

“It is premised on the ground that good mobility and safer roads could be achieved through regulated design and manufacturing of vehicles both assembled locally and imported as well, “he said.

Kazeem quoted the FRSC Corps Marshal, Dauda Biu as saying that the Corps had noticed that since the commencement of enforcement on installation of speed limiting device, a reasonable number of vehicle owners have not complied with the installation policy.

“It is therefore in the quest to tame this compromise and non-compliance that the Corps, decided to propose the development and implementation of pre-fitted speed limiting device for all vehicles assembled in Nigeria and those imported into the country as well.

“This decision was made having done a critical analysis of speed as a major cause of crashes on our roads.

“The Corps took the bold step to nip this menace in the bud because, from January to September, 2023 alone, a total of 7,830 crashes occurred on Nigerian roads. Out of these 69 per cent were speed related,” he said.

Biu said that as part of the strategy for the development and implementation of the policy, the Corps had organised a stakeholders’ workshop to secure the buy in of relevant stakeholders in the road transportation sector.

This, he said was to also ensure that everyone was committed to the objective of the policy which bothered solely on eradicating speed related crashes on our roads.