Devise safer ways of enforcing traffic laws
Published On January 28, 2014 » 2959 Views» By Administrator Times » Opinion
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THE tragic incident in which a Ndola mourner was killed after being hit by a minibus driver who was involved in a car chase with traffic police officers calls for the Police Command to revisit their strategies of enforcing laws related to traffic offences.

It is indisputable that some minibus drivers are notorious on the roads for evading justice whenever they are found on the wrong side of the law.

For instance, in an attempt to meet cashing in record time and start making money of their own, many minibus drivers do so at the expense of road traffic regulations such as over-loading passengers.

In other instances, minibus drivers are guilty of flouting speed limits on a number of routes, and very often overtake others usually on wrong sides, including pedestrians’ walkways.

Other road traffic offences that are common among minibus drivers are the failure by these drives to put on authorised attire, failure to stop when the traffic lights indicate the red sign while still others drive their vehicles even when they know these are defective, un-roadworthy.

When they see a roadblock ahead, the culprits do everything to evade arrest, and their methods range from making sudden u-turns to diverting their minibuses to undesignated roads that pass through residential areas.

Others simply defy officers manning roadblocks by failing to stop even when they are asked to pull over. All these misbehaviours by some minibus drivers simply endanger the lives of their passengers, other motorists and pedestrians alike.

But while it is true the conduct of these minibus drivers puts the lives of road users at risk, and calls for the need by police to punish erring drivers, law-enforcement officers should come up with equally safer and better strategies of doing so instead of chasing the drivers who elude checkpoints.

Chasing minibus drivers is certainly not the best way to enforce the law because it is a risky venture and may cause death in the process, as was the case in Ndola on Monday.

And we must safely state that this was not the first incident where traffic police officers had been caught up in such a situation.

They have been doing it on several occasions, even though it is not every chase that has ended up in deaths.

However, we have reports of some people being injured and property damaged, while motor vehicles of innocent people were caught up in the chase for errant drivers.

Some time back, the Police Command directed traffic police officers to stop chasing contravening minibus drivers.

The traffic police officers, whether on patrol or at roadblocks, were rather instructed to simply take note of the registration or fleet numbers of vehicles whose drivers were breaking road traffic regulations and then follow the matter up with the Road Traffic and Safety Agency (RTSA) to ascertain the owners of the buses and thereafter charge the culprits appropriately.

The other directive was that road traffic police should not impound minibuses for too long as this would inconvenience the passengers, some of whom might be workers rushing for their work stations and may thus fail to meet their various appointments, especially medical personnel.

Such directives do not seem to have been followed. Drivers in particular have raised complaints against police officers whom they accuse of being corrupt.

That’s why these officers have been extorting money from drivers found contravening.

Further, a number of traffic police officers are overzealous in the enforcement of the law and this is why they resort to chasing errant drivers.

To avoid further fatalities, the Police Command should do something and get rid of such bad eggs tarnishing the good image of the Police Service.

The police must also revisit their strategies taking into account the growing population of pedestrians and increasing number of vehicles plying the busy roads.

On the other hand, commuters should realise that they, too, have the power to effect a citizens’ arrest on any erring minibus driver but, sadly, in many cases, it is the passengers themselves who encourage the drivers to behave in that manner, perhaps because they want to reach their various destinations as early as possible.

What the passengers should realise is that it is better, and even safer, to arrive alive late than attempting to be early and in the process end up dead. OPINION

 

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