Amid concern over incessant road crashes, the Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Boboye Oyeyemi has directed Commanding Officers to ensure the enforcement of the law on use of speed limiting device.
The order was a review of the first phase of the end-of-year special patrol embarked upon by FRSC personnel, and the increasing cases of speed-related crashes recorded within the period.
Disclosing this on Sunday, December 27, 2020 in a statement, the Corps Public Education Officer, ACM Bisi Kazeem said that while the Corps Marshal expressed satisfaction with the conduct of most drivers, and the performance of the personnel in curtailing fatality rates of road traffic crashes in the Yuletide period, the increasing level of speed-induced crashes recorded within the period had been undermining the efforts of the Corps to ensure safer roads.
Boboye, who stated that steps would be taken to restore normalcy on the roads, called for a review of the strategy for a more effective enforcement of the regulations on use of speed limiting device, Kazeem wrote in the statement.
The Corps Marshal further noted that while other causative factors such as route violation, dangerous driving and light sign violations were not completely ruled out in the records of crashes that occurred within the period, the recurring nature of speeding as a major factor was a source of deep concern, Kazeem said.
Warning drivers to be speed cautious, the Corps Marshal described the phenomenon as unacceptable.
“We must step up enforcement of the regulations on use of speed limiting device in the second phase of the special operations and first quarter of next year, to drastically reduce the growing trends of speed-induced crashes.
“Commanding Officers are hereby given special directives on aggressive enforcement of the regulations on the use of speed limiting device, to curb the rate of crashes and fatalities that speeding causes, as shown by the records of the first phase of the special operations.
“Consequently, those that are operating without speed limiters, or those using faulty ones, as well as those that have reset their own speed limiters to make them ineffective, must not be spared to endanger the lives of other road users,” Boboye stated.
As part of its annual special end-of-year patrol, the FRSC had been engaged in this year’s special Christmas and new patrol, to address the usual cases of traffic congestion, crashes, death and injuries resulting from increased human and vehicular traffic within the festive periods.
The FRSC Public Education Officer had remarked that the deployments of personnel and logistics to the major highways and identified black spots across the country was being done at the same time with traffic counts, to determine the volume and types of vehicles that would be plying the roads within the period, for a more efficient future traffic management planning.
“The code name for this year’s special operations is, ‘Drive Safe, Stay Safe,’ which was chosen in view of the threats of COVID-19 pandemic.
“It is also a need for members of the public, especially travellers, to operate in full compliance with road safety rules and regulations, and strict adherence to the guidelines issued by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 protocols,” Kazeem added.
