Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

Losing control, speeding, lane indiscipline, improper overtaking and mechanical failure are some of the major human factors that contribute to road traffic crashes, a government agency has revealed.

Pedestrian error of judgment while crossing roads and walking on the road also contributed to fatal crashes.

This even as Senators questioned the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) why it wants to conduct inspections on private vehicles despite lacking the capacity.

Despite initiating the inspection of commercial vehicles, the process has not been completed months after it started with more deaths still being experienced on the roads.

Yesterday, the Senate Roads, Transport and Housing Committee chaired by Kiambu lawmaker Karungo Wa Thang’wa took NTSA Director-General George Njau to task on the measures the authority has taken to reduce road carnage with statistics showing that in 2022, some 4,690 Kenyans lost their lives through crashes.

Njau said that the Authority has listed losing control, lane indiscipline, excessive speed, swerving, crossing roads not masked by stationary vehicles and break failure as some of the major factors causing road bloodbath.

Other factors include tires or wheel defects, pedestrian error of judgement, running into the road, overtaking properly, stealing rides, obstruction, fatigue, stopping suddenly and reversing negligently.

“Reliable and accurate data is important for making evidence-based decisions on crashes where they are likely to occur and what kind of strategies can be undertaken to avoid or reduce fatalities in a specific location or region. The Authority is developing and implementing a national Road Crash Database System in Kenya,” said Njau.

Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna told Njau that the Authority’s data does not show the real causes of car accidents, adding that the Police officers have been harassing motorists about drunk driving more than other factors.

Directly attributed

“Your data shows that there were 315 accidents directly attributed to speeding while only 14 fatalities were directly attributed to drunk driving. It means that your data is not demonstrating that drunk driving is a major cause of fatalities,” said Sifuna.

He went on: “It is a public domain that NTSA erects road blocks to arrest people based on alco-blow and speeding but your own data shows otherwise. Now that we are going to festive seasons, you should concentrate on factors really attributing to road carnage.”

According to 2022 NTSA data on fatalities, of the 4690 deaths, 960 were attributed to losing control of the vehicles, 685 deaths could not be traced to any cause, lane discipline (529), overtaking improperly (501) while misjudging clearance distance or speed accounted to 334 deaths respectively.

In addition, excessive speed accounted for 315, pedestrian error of judgement (156), running into the road (145), crossing the road not masked by stationary vehicle (116) negligence (111) while walking or standing on the road accounted for 71 deaths respectively.

But Sifuna questioned why NTSA woke up one morning and erected bumps along Southern Bypass and after several accidents, they removed them. “NTSA just one day woke up and erected bumps until people started getting accidents that is when you came and removed them,” said Sifuna.

His nominated counterpart Peris Tobiko however insisted that bribery along the roads should also be listed among the major factors of accidents on the road.