In line with global best practices, the Lagos State Government has said that it will continue to deploy technology to enhance safety on Lagos roads.
The Permanent Secretary Ministry of Transportation, Dr. Taiwo Olufemi Salaam stated this while flagging off this year’s bi-annual road safety campaign week of the Lagos State’s Vehicle Inspection Service (VIS) at the Bagauda Kaltho Press Centre, Alausa, Lagos.
He said the deployment of technology by successive administration in the past has led to a drastic reduction in fatality rates in the state, making the state record the lowest accident rate of 78 persons, with 531 persons were injured in 2017.
According to him, the trending analysis of fatal road crashes between 2016 and 2018 showed that 73,504 lives were lost to fatal crashes in 3075 cases. Citing the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reports, Salaam said at least 229,524 cases of road crashes were recorded between 2000 and 2018, an average of 12,080 annually).
“This situation has a major negative impact in the socio-economic wellbeing of the country hence there is need for a more holistic and strategic plan especially as it concerns safer vehicles and safer road users in line with the UN Decade of Action (2011 -2020) and the National Road Safety Strategy Document (NRSS) 2019-2023, Salaam said.
To ensure safer road users, government has embarked on consistent enlightenment programmes for general public by the VIS, and the manual upgrading of manual driver’s licence testing procedure to e-testing, while for safer vehicles, the government has gone ahead to establish computerized vehicle inspection centres across the state for computerized inspection.
“Besides having 19 of such centres across the state, the government has also automated the process of road worthiness certificate, establish a VIS Forensic Laboratory centre equipped with magneto optical device/AutoVIN for proper pre-registration inspection and accident and robbery investigation.
The government has also deployed the use of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology for enforcement of road traffic rules and regulations and synchronized this into the central billing from where bills are generated to all defaulters of the state’s traffic law.
He said the deployment of ANPR, AutoVIN and e-testing in line with the transport sector reform law 2018, has helped to promote safety, sanity, security and standardized driving on Lagos roads.
