Editorial: Road safety should be daily security concern.

Gendarmes, police, and mixed controls are seen round the clock in every twist and bend of the country's roads, ostensibly to ensure road safety and security.

Ironically, the perception by road users is that they are on the road just to collect bribes from motorists and passengers. 

But that is not the case like with back-to-school periods of intensive mobility, when gendarmes, led by senior officials, are deployed to some major roads to ensure road safety.

As Gendarme Commander, Robert Abat Mbeng, in his capacity as head of mission of the road safety campaign, told the press last week, after a control on the Yaounde-Bafoussam axis, 120 road offenders were sanctioned within two days of their operation.

The culprits, he said, were given two options- either to pay a fine on the spot and be issued a receipt or if he or she does not have money, "we proceed to draw up a report which will be sent to the territorially competent person so that the suspect can be prosecuted by competent authorities".

Abat explained further that for repeated offenders "we seize the driver's licence and the Secretary of State for National Gendarmerie transmits it to the Ministry of Transport, where a commission imposes sanction at the discretion of the Minister of Transport". 

He said most of the offences were non-compliance to speed limits, failure to respect road signs, overloading and defective vehicles.

With the alarming number of road accidents, the National Gendarmerie has made the fight against road insecurity a core strategic priority in connection with its sovereign assigned mission of protecting persons and property,

Against the backdrop of the “Decade of action for Road safety” by the United Nations, initiated in 2011, the National Gendarmerie set up a nationwide operation dubbed: “Control-surveillance-Repression” of traffic offences. 

As part of the operation, "while addressing the important aspects of sensitising road users, the National Gendarmerie ensures the effective enforcement of the repressive mechanism, with particular emphasis on the Criminal Procedure Code" that authorises criminal investigation officers to collect fixed fines.

Their assessment indicates that with "the efficient work of the National Gendarmerie teams, statistics now show a gradual reduction in the frequency of road traffic accidents…this operation is in its third generation and its specificity is to carry out mobile controls on roads. Thus, it has contributed to the reduction, by 33% and 40% of the number of accidents and of deaths, respectively, according to data from the Gendarmerie Secretariat," which notes that the "operation has proved to be extremely helpful".

There is no trepidation about the achievement of the gendarmerie special teams often deployed on major roads during the periods of school resumption, end-of-year festivities and on some weekends, when there are often many people travelling.

Their presence, nonetheless, pales into insignificance, compared to that of police and other gendarmes on daily checkpoints.  How many suspects who commit traffic offences are referred to the judicial authorities?

Take the case of a journey from Buea to Douala, for instance. There are at least a dozen checkpoints on the road, with one by Gendarmes permanently inside their vehicle parked in front of the Presbyterian Church in Mutengene. They blow their whistle for vehicles to stop, and drivers come to meet them inside their private car.

In other places, the officials are located in roadside bushes or farms inside large umbrellas. In such situations, how do they inspect the condition of a defective vehicle to ensure road worthiness? Do some vehicles not pass through such controls without immatriculation numbers?

How do they check overloading sitting inside their car or under umbrellas for motorists to come to them?

According to the United Nations, the human cost of road insecurity is dramatic, with the related economic losses for Cameroon estimated at nearly 100 billion FCFA per year, equivalent to 1% of GDP.

Compared to the country's urgent development needs in terms of lost investment, each year these losses represent the equivalent of around: 10,000 classrooms, over 250 kilometres of paved roads and eight referral hospitals; enough to provide all Regions of the country with referral hospitals within two years.

It is therefore urgent for Cameroon to redouble its efforts to ameliorate the road safety situation. This can be done by making road safety campaigns by the special gendarmerie unit a daily affair, not just on periods like back-to-school. 

Government should also improve road conditions, given that bad roads are also a major contribution to road accidents.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post issue N0:3232 of Tuesday September 17, 2024