EDITORIAL: Bad driving calls for a radical change in training

Yesterday, five people died in a horrible but preventable road accident in Nakuru.

By year-end, the roads will have sent about 4,000 healthy, able-bodied people to their early graves and condemned thousands more to the misery of dependence all their lives because of the debilitating injuries they will have suffered.

The annual slaughter gets even grimmer because a similar number die in hospitals. The total reaches about 7,000-8,000 when hospital deaths are factored.

This is a tragedy that the police and the National Transport Safety Authority must confront head-on.

It is shockingly common to find drivers eating, drinking, talking and even sending WhatsApp and SMS messages while behind the wheel. Even with the incorporation of speed limiters, the number of deaths has not taken a downward trajectory.

We have, as a nation, become all complicit in giving drivers – public and private – the licence to kill.

NTSA must fix bad driving with a radical change in driver training. Driving schools do nothing more than basic road signs, entry and exiting a roundabout and how to park.

That approach must be strengthened with the skill to get out of real accident situations and considerable night driving practice.

Quote of the day: “He threatens many that hath injured one.” —English playwright, poet Ben Jonson died on August 6, 1637