Faridah Nampiima the spokes person of the directorate of traffic Police has said that the increased road accidents happening country wide lately are mostly caused by drink driving, reckless driving, over speeding and use of mobile phones while driving.
Last week, a total of 408 road crushes where registered by the traffic Police with a slight increase of 61 crushes compared to the 347 crushes that were registered in the week of 29th January to 4th February.
“Of the 408 crushes registered, 87 were fatal, 207 were serious and 114 were minor. We registered 392 victims in those accidents of which 92 of them died and 300 sustained serious injuries” Nampiima explained.
Nampiima made these remarks while addressing journalists in the joint security press briefing held at Police headquarters in Kampala on Monday.
Furious Nampiima also noted that according to their observations, 90% of the registered crushes involve motorcycles and she urged the riders to ride with caution because their cycles are not faster than cars.
“Some riders have a tendency of overtaking while the vehicle is turning off the road, we are losing a lot of them because of being ignorant of road rules, check your selves as riders” she added.
The traffic Police mouthpiece also called upon those invited for the graduation ceremony at Makerere University and other road users to plan their journeys earlier because they anticipate a heavy traffic flow amidst the graduation week.
“All parents with children graduating this week are urged to carefully read the stickers issued to them and follow the details for easy entry and exit of the University premises as this will solve the issue of traffic flow” she highlighted.
On the issue of busses, Nampiima thanked those that are complying with their rules and she vowed that their directorate will continue exercising their operations on bus drivers who don’t have budges plus companies that have no route charts.
According to the traffic Police every bus driver should have a budge that indicates his name, photo, driving license number and also the company he is operating from. If the driver fails to present it he risks being arrested and charged.
Since this operation started, 380 bus drivers have so far been intercepted by traffic Police and their data has been forwarded to the Works and Transport Ministry for processing of their budges.
“We continue to urge all bus owners to submit the details of their drivers for the processing of their budges to the Ministry before the deadline expires at the end of this week” Nampiima highlighted.
On the issue of motorcycle operations that started on January 12th, Nampiima said that lately a total of 3,100 riders have been tested at the Inspectorate of Vehicles to acquire learner’s permits which is a good progress and she called upon those who haven’t yet complied to do so before phase three of the operations begins.
“This operation is still ongoing across the country and it is not stopping soon, we urge every rider to attain a license because this saves them on our tickets that cost 40,000 each” she noted.
Last week, 3,566 motorcycle riders were arrested by traffic police on charges of not having driving licenses and 3,045 of these were issued with EPS tickets.
