We applaud a new technology dubbed “Traffitech-GH” introduced by the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) in conjunction with the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) to boost the enforcement of road traffic laws and regulations to improve road safety in the country.
The automated system is programmed in a way to automatically take pictures or videos of vehicles whose drivers or riders flout road traffic laws and regulations by doing breakneck speeding and running through red lights.
The system is such that the cameras and sensors being used are fixed at various strategic locations in vehicles and the roadside; radar gun devices also are used.
This means the police and the NRSA want to ensure that this time around offending road users, drivers or motorcycle riders, would be captured and cannot deny perpetrating the particular offence.
This is because pictures and videos of the offences are automatically transmitted to a back office for validation and notifications sent by SMS to the vehicle owners to prompt them to pay the appropriate fines.
That is to say that there is no human interface in which certain negotiations and manipulations can go on to undermine punishments for road offences.
We support the call to the public to help the new technology to succeed because the ever-increasing road crashes in the country and attendant trauma, injuries and fatalities are taking a toll on public safety and health, as well as productivity and public finance.
Over the years, the police, the NRSA and other stakeholders have been doing their bits to ensure road safety but some of the stakeholders themselves undermine the efforts in a way.
It is an open secret, for instance, that some of the MTTD personnel who go on road checks accept bribes from offending road users and set them free.
We cannot tell when the Traffitech-GH can be deployed across the country but hope it would be sooner than later.
This will help eliminate the manipulations and negative influence in checking the carnage and other unpleasantness on the country’s road such as injuries, knockdowns, over-loading, speeding and unnecessary overtaking.
Now, there is a call on the public to help the new system work and the question for the police and the NRSA to answer is: “How do the members of the public other than drivers and motorcycle riders help the new system to work?”
Most of the time, the police in particular frustrate the efforts of members of the public who venture to report offending drivers to them, hence our question.
We think the public must know their role under the new system and play it accordingly.
But while we embrace the new system, we wish to call attention to one important thing in road safety – the traffic light.
It is a pity that it takes long to repair faulty traffic lights in this country in spite of their importance.
Therefore, we appeal to the NRSA to ensure that faulty traffic lights are readily fixed.
Besides, the Authority should identify places that need traffic lights such as the Haatso station in Accra and fix some there.
We believe the Traffitech-GH has come to complement efforts in road safety and so ongoing efforts will not be abandoned.
