A statement by the Corps Public Education Officer, Mr. Bisi Kazeem, the said that Oyeyemi said that the Nigerian economy was losing massively as a result of high traffic on the highways.
The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has said that Road Traffic Crashes (RTC) on most of the Nigeria’s highways causes the nation’s economy about N3bn annually.
The corps also disclosed that 38 per cent of all African road traffic deaths occur among pedestrians on the continent.
The Corps Marshal of FRSC, Mr. Boboye Oyeyemi, stated this while making a presentation on Non-Motorised Transportation (NMT) at the General Assembly of the West African Road Safety Organisation (WARSO) at Dakar, Senegal.
A statement by the Corps Public Education Officer, Mr. Bisi Kazeem, the said that Oyeyemi said that the Nigerian economy was losing massively as a result of high traffic on the highways.
Oyeyemi further said that road traffic crashes also decrease air quality owing to exhaust fumes, increases urban noise pollution that causes exhaustion among other health implications and sustains increase in its carbon foot print, among other effects.
Oyeyemi explained further that traffic congestions also impacted negatively to about 3 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries to which Nigeria is a member.
He added that the corps had put in result yielding initiatives in place to promote Non-Motorised Transportation (NMT) in Nigeria and the African sub-region.
The initiatives according to him were Established National Stakeholders Committee on Bicycle Transportation, designed the first ever, National Cycling Policy and Strategy in Nigeria and Presently, working on the pedestrian manual.
More so, he emphasised that the corps understudied six cities in five different countries with a view to domesticating best practices, established a non-motorised transportation unit to galvanise initiatives and to institutionalise them.
Also, Oyeyemi disclosed that 38 per cent of all African road traffic deaths occur among pedestrians.
Oyeyemi said that half of the world’s road traffic deaths occur among motorcyclists; 23 per cent, pedestrians; 22 per cent, cyclists; five per cent, 31 per cent deaths recorded among car occupants while the remaining 19 per cent occur among unspecified road users.
According to Oyeyemi, rate of deaths recorded among pedestrians and cyclists, was “84 per cent of the roads in low-income and middle-income countries where pedestrians are present carry traffic at 40 km/h and above and have no footpaths, however, where the footpaths exist, there is the concern of encroachment, truncation, abuse/misuse by motorist and lack of protective features that totally segregate pedestrians and prevent its usage by other road users.”
He also stated that pedestrians had a 90 per cent chance of surviving car crashes at 30 km/h or below, but less than a 50 per cent chance of surviving impacts at 45 km/h or above.
He added that pedestrians risked about 80 per cent chance of being killed at a collision speed of 50 kilometres/hour (km/h), as opposed to a 10 per cent risk at speeds of 30 km/h.
He recalled that at a particular point in Nigeria, bicycle was a mobility of pride, a dream comes through for the lower class and a celebrated mode even for the well to do in the society, but the oil windfall of 1973 brought about prosperity especially for the working class and opened up the transportation space.