SOMETIME back, a Zambian musician the late Emmanuel Mulemena sang a heart-rending song in ki-Kaonde Mbokoshi Yalufu (moving coffin) lamenting the risk we take in motor vehicles.
Long after Mulemena sang the song, our Zambian roads are far from being safe.
According to the Zambian Road Safety Trust (ZRST), there were 32,000 accidents recorded in Zambia last year resulting in 1, 858 deaths.
The Trust also notes that road deaths in Zambia have increased by 85 per cent between 2012 to 2014 from 1,000 to 1,858 respectively.
The Trust further states that accident rates increase at approximately nine per cent, per year, while the fatality rates increase at approximately 10 per cent per year.
It is such grim statistics that should compel society to realise that road safety should involve all road users – motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and even barrow boys.
Since its launch in 2014, the ZRST has implemented a comprehensive integrated road safety education programme in pre-school and primary schools.
This has been done in partnership with many organisations including the Ministry of Education, international partner NGO Amend, Puma Energy Zambia Plc and Puma Energy Foundation.
The Trust chairperson Daniel Mwamba says the issue of road safety is a complex one encompassing a diverse range of problems and solutions.
Mr Mwamba said there are so many contributory factors to road accidents that lead to a road user failing to cope in a particular situation.
He said the Trust was raising awareness on the number of children killed in traffic accidents revealing that in 2014, more than 200 children in Zambia were killed, while 1,389 were injured or disabled.
Mr Mwamba said raising awareness of road safety issues among school-children is one of the primary targets of the Trust’s action plan.
As part of this intervention, the ZRST has developed a range of road safety material and trained road safety instructors to educate school children about road safety.
While commending the work of organisations like the Road Traffic and Safety Agency (RTSA), Zambia Police and ZRST, concerns have been raised about some traffic regulations among them the mounting of numerous road blocks.
While road blocks are vital, the Zambia Police and (RATSA) should conduct more traffic patrols since they have proved to be more effective than road blocks.
The Zambia Police and (RTSA) have invested massively in road blocks to catch drunken drivers and other errant motorists.
It has been noted though that apart from road blocks causing unnecessary traffic jams and frustrating drivers, they rarely help in catching motorists who have had too much to drink before getting behind the wheel or even other sober errant motorists.
It might seem counterintuitive, but road blocks are not effective ways to crack down on drunken driving and motorists breaking the law.
To understand the shortcomings of this traffic enforcement method, one should consider the numbers of cars that pass through a road block that the law enforcers catch.
Understandably, road blocks are highly visible by design— thus extremely easy to avoid. Most motorists, especially in Lusaka, know escape routes. Some simply U-turn, driving back using a ‘safer’ route.
Minibus drivers are notorious for warning their colleagues by using signals like hooting or a mere thumb up.
Then we have the phone that can be used to quickly text a friend a cautionary heads-up.
Instead of trying to catch drunken motorists at a road block most motorists know how to avoid, RTSA and Police ought to conduct more traffic patrols, where officers actively seek out drunken and dangerous drivers.
To make roads safer, traffic officers and RTSA officers should ditch sobriety road blocks at night in favour of roving  patrols — where Police officers actively patrol and seek out drunk and dangerous drivers.
According to a comparative analysis by the ZRST, patrols efforts yield more arrests than sobriety road blocks.
In addition to better targeting dangerous drunken drivers, roving traffic officers also crackdown on other types of high-risk behaviours, like distracted or drowsy driving.
At night there are so many sleepy or fatigued drivers who cause accidents in every six fatal car accidents, according to the Trust.
For comparison, less-effective road blocks require a dozen officers, while patrols need fewer staff and yet yield better results in nabbing errant motorists.