Commercial drivers undergo driving management course

Page 34
16-10-08

ROAD Safety and Transportation Consultancies (RSTC) Limited, a driving training institution, has provided training in Driving Management Science (DMS) for 3,940 commercial drivers without any charge.
The programme aims at enhancing the competencies of drivers in terms of exhibition of positive attitudes and behaviours.
“The entire objective of DMS is to make professional drivers accept the concept of zero tolerance for crash. DMS also inculcate better vehicle handling and maintenance culture in vehicles,” Mr Godfred Akyea-Darkwah said at end of a one-week intensive course for 40 commercial drivers in Accra on Friday.
The programme took the drivers through safe driving, customer care, drivers habit and ethics, vehicle fire safety, topography of Accra, practical driving techniques and essentials of vehicle maintenance.
Mr Akyea-Darkwah said the DMS programme, which started in 1994 by RSTC, had come to replace the defensive driving methodology of training professional drivers, adding that defensive driving programme should be restricted to beginner drivers in the driving profession.
He said out of the number of drivers trained, only one professional driver had been involved in a crash for the past four years when the DMS was introduced.
Facilitators, he said, hammered more on the current electioneering and the danger it posed to road users, passengers and pedestrians, adding that road traffic accidents went up during election years.
Mr Akyea-Darkwah said for instance, statistics from the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) indicated that 717 people were killed in 6,922 accidents that occurred in 1992, while 1,040 people were killed in 8,488 accidents in 1996 with 1,578 people dying in 11,714 accidents in 2000.
In 2004, he said, there were 12,164 accidents killing 2,173.
“I, therefore, wish to seize the opportunity to appeal to the commercial, institutional drivers and the motoring public to be patient and careful as the electioneering campaign is heating up. All road networks are experiencing convoy and campaign driving style which is full of speeding and blatant disregard for road speed limits,” he said, adding that that was “characterised with overloading” and “people sitting in vehicle buckets to campaign grounds are all forms of high risks activities”.
He appealed to drivers not to follow or compete with convoy vehicles, and that drivers should not prevent convoy vehicles from bypassing them even if they were opposed to the party vehicles that were moving.
In the same vein, he said, campaign passengers should desist from sitting in the buckets and trailers of vehicles such as pick-ups and payloaders, since they posed high risk to occupants, and that “convoy drivers are also reminded that they should be conscious of the people they meet on the road”.
The officer in charge of Information Management at the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), Mr Kwame Kodua Atuahene, said the issue of road safety was a shared responsibility and that all had a role to play.
The course prefect, Mr George Asare, said the DMS programme gave a vivid account of each road safety and vehicle maintenance issues.