'Road Safety is No Accident'
on Tara's Ethiopian Adventure (Ethiopia), 24/Feb/2010 09:53, 34 days ago
‘Road Safety is No Accident’ is the slogan found at the bottom of every weekly update from VSO Ethiopia. Along with it comes a‘top tip’ for the week about staying safe on the roads. Things like...‘walk facing the traffic’...‘wear white at night’ and ...‘cross at designated crossings’. It seems there is a major campaign to reduce road traffic accidents at the moment...and no wonder. 1996 statistics show that Ethiopia has the second highest (next to Central African Republic) rate of road fatalities in relation to the number of vehicles globally (about 195 per every 10,000 vehicles). Over half of these being pedestrians. Every time I have taken a journey that has lasted over an hour I have passed at least one overturned lorry or minibus on the side of the road.On the way back from Awassa on Monday we had plenty of near misses as our bus overtook the slow lorries on the road. We often had situations where we were overtaking a lorry only to find that ahead of us was a similar situation with a bus overtaking a lorry. So... four vehicles facing each other in a crazy game of chicken.. lots of honking, swerving and miraculously everyone back on their correct sides of the road just in time! The last 45 minutes of our journey was in the dark. Unlike some vehicles ours did at least have headlights and so herdsmen walking their cattle along the road had plenty of warning of our presence. They in turn warned us of their presence by flashing bright torches in our direction. Our driver quickly slowed the vehicle down... just in time! As we waited at a complete standstill for the cattle to pass, thinking we had narrowly escaped another collision, another bus came hurtling around the corner... its breaks didn’t seem so effective and it went ploughing into the cows (not us luckily). The cows in turn went ploughing into our vehicle with quite a thud and a couple ended up under the other bus. Amazingly, when the other bus backed up a bit the cows that had looked quite dead underneath quickly got to their feet and hobbled off. Our door had been quite badly knocked by the cows needed some considerable kicking before it was able to open again but otherwise everyone was fine.This isn’t an exceptional story of travel in Ethiopia but really a case of the norm. I don’t want to scare you however... the drivers all seem to be well adapted to the requirements of driving in such crazy circumstances and all the vehicles I have been on have had good breaks and relatively sensible drivers. I try to avoid travelling at night (when most accidents occur) and in the rain (although this may be harder in the rainy season) and am normally so sandwiched into my seat by my bags that the lack of seatbelt does not seem so relevant!On a more positive note Ambo town itself seems to one of the most road safety conscious places I have ever been! We are lucky enough to have nice pavements lining the main street and even still EVERYONE walks facing the traffic. The roads are busiest between 5pm and 6pm (although mostly with pedestrians) and during this time the‘one way walking’ is most evident! I also enjoy watching the road at around midday when the two shifts of school swap over. The morning students walk home on the left and the afternoon students walk to school on the right (as you face down town from the university). Two long lines of green uniform snaking their way along the high street. Anyone visiting Ambo will quickly feel out of place if they find themselves walking on the wrong side of the road, such is the culture here. It is really quite impressive!With various road safety campaigns and mandatory seatbelts for drivers in Addis I think the road mortality statistics must have improved since 1996 but it is still has a way to go. Apparently the seatbelt law in Addis caught seatbelt suppliers off guard and there are not actually enough seatbelts for every driver’s seat. However, due to hefty fines put in place for those not wearing a seatbelt some have taken to placing the straps of a bag over themselves to fool the traffic police. Although the bag straps are unlikely to save their lives at least all these efforts are making people much more aware of the need for road safety in Ethiopia.