Are you a Jay Walker? When was the last time you jay walked? But do you know who a jay walker is? Jay walking is defined as the “illegal, reckless pedestrian crossing of a roadway....crossing between intersections outside a cross-walk marked or unmarked without yielding to drivers.” So the people you see walking into roads as if blind, some weaving their way with or without bicycles/motor as if they have magic powers to melt down metal, and others behaving as if they are invincible and nothing can ever harm them are all jay walkers.
Let’s face it, there are many jay walkers in Ghana – rural and urban, oblivious to dangers. Hawkers are the champions of the jay walking fraternity. They take the art to unimaginable heights.
I picked up some shocking statistics from the National Road safety Commission (NRSC) a few days ago. I must share this information with you so no blood would be on my hands. Information is meant to be shared for it to become knowledge that would – with all fingers crossed, result in people changing their attitudes and behaviours. Knowledge, they say, is power. Knowledge, I say, is freedom; it liberates. Without it, the bible says that the people perish. So don’t perish. Read on.
Who are these pedestrians?
Any careful observer to the madness on our roads could make some wild guesses about who is being knocked down by vehicles. But since as they say, ‘book no lie’, here are some shocking facts about pedestrian fatalities during the period 2001 to 2005. These figures represent fatalities and injuries on our roads recorded by the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service during that period.
Twenty three percent of road fatalities involving pedestrians are between the ages of six to 15, twelve percent are between ages 16 and 25, and eleven percent are between age 26 and 35. That implies that a total of forty six percent of people aged between six and 35 are being knocked down by vehicular traffic while using roads in Ghana in rural as well as urban parts of our beloved country.
These figures represent the gory heart-wrenching stories you hear which makes you feel that God is not looking out for some people. These are the fatalities which don’t make sense, which hurt so deeply at the core, which take a very long time to recover from. Some might even suspect that an aging poor female relative in the village – a witch, was behind it. Of course, such an accusation would not make logical sense. But in the period of hurt and pain, some people hurry to assign blame. The one area of blame that is not paid much attention to is the actual cause – lousy road crossing in the face of reckless driving.
The six to thirty-five age group represents the youthful, active, productive, vibrant people in any society. This is the time of growing up, the age where people learn about life and living, where they go to school and get an education to prepare themselves for life. This is the age of dreaming, of setting goals and making plans, the age of exploring the universe to see what lies ahead with eyes set on the future. After the teenage years, people begin to warm up for marriage, with reproduction in sight.
The early years are the time when parents invest in their children with hopes that they would become ‘somebody’ in future. So when these people lose their lives and never live their lives in full, their loss become a loss to society, and a pain to their families and loved ones. Some parents and loved ones never recover from the disappointment, the hurt, the pain, the loss.
From the statistics, it appears that after age 35, people begin to wise up. The pedestrian fatalities of the 36 to 45 age bracket is five percent, the 46 to 55 is four percent, the 56 to 65 is three percent while the over age 65 is one percent. Ideally, people should wise up or be taught to become wise users of roads much earlier in life to save everyone the unnecessary pain and suffering.
Children up to age five get killed too. That age group constitutes seven percent of pedestrian fatalities. These are our babies. This figure suggests that some parents are not taking good care of their children and expose them to fatal dangers. What recklessness! If parents would learn the right way of crossing or using roads, they can pass on useful lessons to their offspring. Otherwise, we would live with and entrench a vicious cycle of generation after generation who cross roads recklessly.
While we’re busy worrying about malaria, diarrheal, and exotic diseases like cancer, Herpertitis, H1N1 Flu, HIV and AIDS and yet-to-be named diseases which some of us can barely pronounce, vehicles are knocking us down; maiming some and killing some.
The driving cooking pot: Place a pack of tin called a motor vehicle on a pot-hole human/coffin infested roads without shoulders; put an alcoholic behind the steering wheel. The roads have no lights, no road signs, no speed limit. The roads are poorly designed. Then take an over-sized wooden spoon. Stir the concoction in the pot vigorously. Increase the fire. Leave no stone or firewood unturned. Remove or give single-spine remuneration to police officers who are already spoilt beyond measure. What do you have? BOOM! Or, ten Booms at Okyereko Junction near Winneba....and other hot deadly spots on roads throughout Ghana.
Some road crossers are so tired that they float on the fringes of retardation or straightforward lunacy that renders them so tardy that even the most careful driver could push them into the sticky arms of their maker who might not even recognize them because they’ll arrive in a very confused state of restlessness and it would take weeks or months for their souls to even know that they have died (ahhhhh – what a winding sentence! But, you get the picture!)
Night time road crossing is the worst. Let’s face it. We are little black people. Most of us are not that tall. So having dark-complexioned people cross roads in the dark, on streets that are not lighted, with tired drivers behind the wheels is only an accident waiting to happen. But do these factors constitute accidents or incidents?
Redefinition of Accidents
An accident is a mishap, mistake and a misfortune that can be catastrophic. A collision, bump, crash is an accident. But how justifiable is a vehicular crash with a catastrophic outcome be considered an accident if drivers and pedestrians consistently act in careless manner knowing what the consequences could be? One could therefore say that most of our road traffic crashes are incidents and not accidents. You don’t have to be a Prophet of some sort to predict. Just from watching situations unravel on our roads, you could guess what can occur at any moment. So when they occur, how can they be described as accidents?
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