The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) has cautioned motorists to desist from making night travels across Nigeria.
The corps disturbed by the spate of road crash fatalities resulting from night-time travels warned Nigerian motorists to desist from night trips due to obvious and inherent dangers associated with such trips.
Making this declaration, the corp’s public education officer, Corps Commander Imoh Etuk highlighted numerous factors which negate night-time travels in Nigeria.
Etuk said this include the poor state of roads, inadequate rescue services, driver’s fatigue, inadequate road signs and markings and poor vehicle maintenance culture.
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Etuk emphasized on the change of light intensity and blur effect of night driving on the vision of drivers which increases the probability of road crashes at night.
Under this circumstances, according to him, when light levels are reduced, the pupil of the eyes open up in size to admit more light thus making what the driver sees to become blurred.
Etuk said: “Since the human eye takes time to adjust to new levels of light, a driver on night trip suffers temporary vision impairment when moving from bright areas (motor way intersections in the urban centres) to dark areas(rural areas where there is minimal road lights).”
He also added that the impact of night-time driving could involve the bright light from vehicle lights, particularly from the rear view mirror.
Etuk said this could lead to the temporary loss of a driver’s vision.
He said: “At 100 metres per hour, a vehicle moves at 28 metres per second, meaning that the lives of all occupants of such vehicles will be put to serious danger when the driver suffers a temporary loss of sight”.
He also said the recent night-time fatal crash on Wednesday, November 18, at Sango Ota, old toll gate end of the Lagos-Abeokuta express way happened at 12 am.
The crash led to the death of nine people and many others were injured.
According to Etuk: “Media reports indicate that the crash occurred when a truck loaded with cement, apparently had a brake failure, veered off its lane and rammed into several other vehicles.”
On strategies adopted by the corps in curbing the trend of night trips in Nigeria, Etuk said while the FRSC does not wish to step on the fundamental human rights of most Nigerians to move freely, it is still instructive to advise the motoring public on the hazards associated with this practice.
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“This underscores why we embark on robust public awareness campaigns for Nigerians to appreciate the grievious dangers of travelling at night at the moment because of the absence of the proper indices to ensure the safety of those who prefer to travel at night.” Etuk said.
He also frowned at the use of extra lights by drivers of heavy duty vehicles due to its dazzling effect on other drivers, adding that the FRSC operatives have been mandated to prosecute any driver who carries extra light on his vehicle which is a violation of the provisions of the National Road Traffic Regulation, 2004.
In 2014, a total of 5 996 road fatalities were recorded by FRSC, this indicates an increase by 8% compared to the previous year, 2013, which had 6,450 reported road fatalities.
The corps marshal, Boboye Oyeyemi also said that most of the road crashes are caused by over-speeding.
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