Transporters of schoolchildren must soon obey robust new regulations to reduce bloodshed on the roads.
The new regulations by the National Transportation and Safety Authority (NTSA) are expected to curb carnage in general.
The authority has come under scrutiny following the recent spate of road accidents, one of them involving the death of 11 students on a bus in Voi on March 23.
On Monday evening, at least 11 people were killed and more than 40 others injured in two separate road accidents.
On March 1, a remote system of speed governors and limiters went into effect, providing information on moving vehicles.
NTSA has proposed two key regulations it says will greatly reinforce order and raise the bar for compliance
Starting this week, members of the public are expected to give their views on Draft School Transport Regulations 2024 and Draft Heavy Commercial Service Vehicle Regulations 2024.
NTSA Director General George Njao said the regulations have been in the works for more than a year and are not a knee-jerk reaction to recent road deaths.
“We identified a risk on school transport, not the regulated school buses but parents who have contracted certain individuals to provide transport for their school-going children,” he said.
In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with the Star, the NTSA boss said the regulations followed concerns that some vehicles that parents join forces to hire are dilapidated and largely unregulated.
“We have enhanced the regulations to introduce technology. The vehicles will be fitted with telematics and dashboard cameras to monitor the behaviour of drivers and occupants,” Njao said.
“We have heard from the Education Ministry of harassment and bullying in school transport systems. The idea is to give parents the comfort of knowing where their child has been picked and dropped, and how the vehicle is being operated,” the NTSA director general said.
In the rules, NTSA calls for vehicles transporting children to have minders on board, for instance, to help them cross the road and check on their general safety.
“An area of concern is that when you drop a child in Standard 2, how do they cross the road?” Njao asked.
In another corrective measure, NTSA seeks to reintroduce road safety lessons in the school curriculum.
“We contracted the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) to slot road safety in the school curriculum,” the NTSA boss said.
He cited the old times when road safety officers visited schools to teach children how to conduct themselves around roads.
“We lost it at some point but we want to integrate and entrench it in the school curriculum so children carry the knowledge of road safety throughout their lives,” he said.
Njao said the lessons will also help children know the dangers of playing by the roadside or in parking lots. He said it was regrettable that the shrinking public spaces have pushed children out of their playing fields.
“We want to ingrain in children’s minds, even when they are playing in estates, the road area and parking area are not play areas.”
Njao said NTSA has adopted a holistic approach that extends beyond highways.
“Road safety is not just about highways. Statistics show that those who have died inside vehicles are fewer than those killed outside,” he explained.
He said accidents were largely caused by drunken driving not just alcohol but other stimulants – plus speeding, fatigue, failing to plan a journey, and lack of courtesy.
Njao said medical conditions are also at play, indicating that drivers could soon be subjected to medical checks.
“We want to undertake a medical assessment of drivers using the existing legal framework,” Njao said
NTSA, together with road agencies, has also mapped blackspots on major highways and will work with the Kenya Roads Board to improve signage.
“We are going to the second phase targeting potentially dangerous areas. We believe if a driver is given more information, she or he would be able to operate a vehicle in a much better manner.”
NTSA also aims to increase enforcement at night “as it seems to be the time when a lot of the accidents are happening.”
Njao said since a blanket ban on-night travel ban is impractical, it would be up to Saccos as a self-regulating entities to ensure only rested drivers are behind the wheel.
Heavy commercial vehicles will also be subject to new regulations beyond the Traffic Act, which is not specific on large transport vehicles and how to handle dangerous
“We are tightening some of the gaps that are being exploited… We will also bring garbage and sand trucks under the regulations. Some of the sand trucks don’t come for inspection, owing to the routes of their operations.”
Njao dismissed assertions that NTSA and the concerned authorities have employed a knee-jerk reaction to road carnage.
He said the authority, in being proactive, has introduced a remote system of speed governors and limiters that can monitor and give feedback on the status of vehicles.
The system, which went into operation on March 1, can inform a user whether a vehicle has a speed governor and whether it is working.
“Every vehicle going for inspection has to transmit – within five seconds – the movement and any violations of speed limiters. We want to provide you with information on whether a vehicle has speed limiters and whether they are functional,” Njao said.
He also said the NTSA would also conduct a crackdown on illegal passenger service vehicles, saying they don’t comply with speed and inspection rules.
Njao said the authority is digitising its systems to allow early detection of faulty speed limiters.
To be more proactive, NTSA has drawn a National Road Safety Action Plan 2024-27 with priority areas.
They include vehicle safety standards and compliance, targeting unsafe behaviour, and public education about a monitoring and evaluation system.
Njao said the aim is “to entrench a focused coordinated approach and not a knee-jerk reaction.”
“We realised that without a coordinated strategy, we will always have this cyclic situation. Since people forget, we will have continuous campaigns about road safety.”
REFLECTIVE NUMBER PLATES
Kenyans have been urged to expeditiously apply for new generation number plates and swiftly collect them after being notified they are ready.
The plates contain the registration information of the vehicle and the owner’s ID and other information.
NTSA data showed that as of Friday, April 5, as many as 45,000 new number plates remained uncollected.
Njao was non-committal about deadlines for acquiring the new plates. He said the focus should be more on the objective than the timelines.
“Part of our goal is cleaning the dataset of motor vehicle records and also providing citizens with accurate and validated information they can use to verify the same,” he said.
As many as 200,000 logbooks remained uncollected, and numerous were driver’s licences.
The number plates have QR codes that give basic information about a vehicle such as its identification, make, model, and colour, which can aid a potential buyer.
“This helps one see the vehicle presented is the one they want to enter a transaction about.”
He said the government is at the final stages of integrating the vehicle records from duty, insurance, and registration perspectives.
The aim is to avoid false claims, and change of data sets sun as the number of seats or passenger capacity and.
“It is also part of the Kenya Kwanza administration guidelines on digitisation.”
“We hope to complete the integration before the end of the current financial year to ease access to the assets,” the NTSA boss said.
Njao said the authority was trying its best to clear pending reflective plates.
On deadlines, he said, “We want to change the scenario of last-minute rushes. We want the process to be easy, simple.”
He said the government is doing outreaches to office complexes with many employees and giving out plates.
“We are taking the service to the offices. The plan is the ease of doing business so that if you have finished the registration, we deliver it to you.”
The NTSA director general added the authority is simply returning data sets and records to owners of vehicles.
“You risk selling your car by simply giving someone codes to transact on your car. Why would you give someone else access to your assets?” he asked.
On driving licenses, he said the authority is now providing information on the status of an application at any stage.
“We have changed modes of informing the public. You will be able to see the status of the production line. We are working on an SMS short code where you can query.”
“We had thought the app would solve the problem but we want to return the USSD shortcodes to be able to access the database,” the NTSA boss said.
On rampant accidents, Njao said they have been working with the National Police Service and coordinating joint enforcement activities to check on continuous compliance across the board.
