Corruption Kenya's biggest threat to road safety

It was as the petrol tanker came careering down the escarpment shoving the vehicles coming uphill against the sheer rock cliff surface that it struck home just how dangerous Kenya’s roads can be and the driver of the truck, made what I can only assume to be a split second decision to send his vehicle over the edge of the sheer drop and take his chances rather than the inevitable conclusion of a horrific crash.

I often wonder whether he survived this, some bystanders say they saw someone climb from the cab but we will never know and there was nothing in the media in the following days.

I mention this because the vehicle should clearly have never been on the road in the first place and invariably greed had come before common sense when the owners decided to put profit before logic and the vehicle inspectors and police turned a profitable blind eye.

This story, I realised, was far from unique, almost everyone who has driven on Kenya’s roads has some sort of near miss story and certainly, from my perspective, the standard of driving and vehicle maintenance has only regressed.

Venturing along Mombasa Road further than Athi, wrecks of vehicles festering at the side of the road are almost always a prominent feature. There is one predominant factor that caused 4579 road deaths in 2021 and that term is one familiar to every Kenyan, that is corruption.

Most mornings, it is difficult to pull out from my child’s school onto the main road because a matatu has undertaken along the murram verge, at speed, to try and gain a few seconds and subsequently caused gridlock, or successfully turning right I am met by a vehicle careering down the wrong side of the road on a collision course for a head on with me.

This is done brazenly and in full view of the white hatted traffic police, whose true purposes appears to have morphed entirely into revenue collection officers. Unfortunately it is only a matter of time until there is a serious accident on this site.

It is not hard to see it, bus after bus, truck after truck are directed to the side of the road, a hand emerges from the window, a small piece of paper passes from the occupant to the police officer and the vehicle is swiftly on way.

No checks for insurance, no enforcement of the rules of the road, it is a licence to drive the ailing vehicles as if they are partaking in the safari rally classic.

The result of this is that where traffic slows, due to volume of vehicles, a collision or due to sheer incomprehensible insanity, Kenyan drivers feel enabled to create a new lane, be it on the verge or the wrong side of the road, causing pedestrians to jump out of the way and for vehicles proceeding on the correct side of the road to be forcibly pushed off the road.

A BBC Africa undercover operation last year highlighted the scale of the problem, in one instance, a Nairobi driving school agreed, in cohorts with compromised individuals within the NTSA, to facilitate the issuance of a driving licence to an individual who had never had one second of formal instruction.

In the second instance, a matatu, independently inspected by mechanics and clearly identified as a death trap, was granted a public service vehicle licence and sent out to transport paying passengers despite a very real prospect that the only place it would be transporting them to would be their graves.

Not long ago I was sat in the invariable traffic jam along Magadi Road as commuters sought to find their way home when a matatu, knowing that a hundred shillings gave the driver licence to do as he wished, came careering down the inside, off road and promptly hit an unseen ditch and performed a one hundred and eighty degree flip to end up on its roof, as usually the ultimate victims were the innocent public paying over their hard earned shillings in the hope of making it home swiftly and safely.

But it doesn’t need to be this way, a few years ago, the Government of Kenya introduced its new smart driving licences, the concept was that in addition to extra security measure, the licence could be pre loaded with funds and any minor traffic offence fines could be transparently applied at the roadside with the funds going into the relevant Government fund rather than the bulging pockets of the police.

I rushed down to NTSA and got my licence looking forward to this positive development but years later, nothing has changed, motorist are still offered the frustrating choice between filling the pockets of the traffic cops or parting with cash bail and spending days at court, often necessitating taking unpaid leave from unsympathetic employers. The choice to most is a simple one.

President William Ruto recently appointed a new Inspector General of Police, Japheth Koome. He inherits a service riddled with issues, problems and complications however at the heart of that, is a traffic police department which is no longer fit for purpose.

In many countries, evidence of a police officer receiving a bribe, no matter how small, is sufficient for that person to be imprisoned, forfeit their pension and never get meaningfully employed again, this is a real deterrent and the one that should be employed in Kenya.

The current scenario, where agencies such as the Ethics and Anti Corruption Commission invest significant amounts of time and resources gathering the evidence, only for the police officer to have his bail and fine crowd funded by colleagues is indicative of a significant problem with police culture.

Windows of opportunity for positive change are few and far between but maybe now we have one, maybe just maybe, the Inspector General of Police may decide to take the bold move to overhaul the traffic police for good, to take a zero tolerance position on corruption, to push hard for the suspension and dismissal of the corrupt and for pensions to be forfeited, not just for the constables and sergeants on the street but the inspectors and chief inspectors who are complicit and demand their subsequent share.

I honestly feel that Kenya’s roads devoid of crippled and mangled vehicles crawling along at a snails pace belching fumes of cancerous smog and of buses flying around like fairground dodgems will make us all much safer, happier and more prosperous.

Simon Marsh is an anti-corruption specialist