<<Print>>

Six people die every day through road crashes, statistics from the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) has revealed. The statistics also indicates that over two thousand people die each year with over 840 of the dead being pedestrians. Mr David Osafo Adonteng, Director, Planning and Programmes, NRSC, gave the breakdown during a sensitization workshop for religious leaders on the need for them to educate their congregation on road safety. He said 73.7 per cent of those who die in road crashes were men while 26.3 per cent were women, adding that the Commission had detected that most road accidents were usually recorded on Saturdays. He said road safety had now become a humanitarian issue with 1.3 million people losing their lives worldwide with 3,500 people dying daily in the world due to road crashes. Mr Adonteng said road crashes had been recorded as the leading cause of death for those aged between 15 and 29. Mrs May Obiri-Yeboah, Executive Director, NRSC, said the Commission decided on the sensitization programme for the religious leaders because it formed part of its decentralization programme and also due to the tremendous influence they had on their followers She said the partnership was to enable the religious leaders to educate their followers on the need to observe road safety. She called on religious leaders to give road safety prominence on their religious calendars in order to give effective education on the topic to their followers. �NRSC would be delighted if our religious leaders could place the observation of road safety on their calendars so as to give more time to issues relating to road safety on such day�, Mrs Obiri-Yeboah added. Mr Thomas Donkor, Senior Public Health Engineer, Local Government Service, appealed to the religious leaders to help state institutions do their work properly.