“Casualties toll of traffic accidents increasing alarmingly”

• House Speaker Tagesses Chaffo

 Dec. 04, 2019; Addis Ababa: Speaker of the House of Peoples’ Representatives of the FDRE, Tagesse Chaffo, on the platform for traffic accidents awareness raising said; “casualties toll of traffic accidents increasing alarmingly”.

The Speaker said this in his opening remarks made for MPs, civil servants of the secretariat of the House and other stakeholders invited to attend the awareness raising platform on the consequences of the traffic accidents in the country.

During his delivery, Ato Tagesse pointed, the skills shortage in driving along with the technical malfunctions of the vehicles and the obvious drawbacks in the roads infrastructure are considered the major reasons for the traffic accidents occurring across the nation.

Minister of transport W/ro Dagmawit Moges on her part said, the media are expected a lot to teach all stakeholders in order to minimize the escalating extent of traffic accidents, which occur as a result of multiple reasons.

The minister requested the House to conduct close supervision on the training centres for drivers and related issues.

The platform was run by two researchers who conducted studies on the traffic accidents nature and consequences. Dr Teferi Abegaz, a lecturer at the medical faculty of Addis Ababa University presented the traffic accidents detail in Addis Ababa within the last consecutive five years. Bone fracture specialist surgeon Dr Bruk Lappiso from Black Lion hospital was the other researcher who presented his work to the floor.

Dr Teferi, the first presenter said; there are tremendous root causes for the escalation of the traffic accidents in Addis Ababa. Some of the salient ones are: the ways drivers are licensed, the societal degraded value for driving, using motor bikes as transportation means, driving being drunk, improper buckling of seat-belts, exceeding speed limits while driving and using phone conversations amid driving. These are identified by the research.

Dr Bruk’s respective research finding shows, most of the fatal victims of the traffic accidents are aged 15 to 29, which is a great loss of the productive man-power of the nation. He recommended drivers before they begin to drive shall better attend a kind of training on how traffic accidents harm the society.

Attendants of the daylong session on their part expressed their observations as well. Most of them speculate the toll of injuries including death could exceed the numbers presented by the researchers. Hence, they said; they are looking forward for ways of minimizing the amount, as soon as possible.

According to the information learnt from the platform, 90 per-cent of traffic casualties happen in developing nations. It is recorded as the 5^th most fatal disease in these nations.

Translated by Asrat Addisu