Yesterday the Uganda was hit by news of a road traffic crash in which 13 high school students were seriously injured.  This is the fourth crash to be registered on the newly-constructed Masaka highway (linking the capital city of Uganda-Kampala to Kigali, Rwanda) in a space of ten days. Just days earlier, three people including a beauty queen and a local journalist  were killed when their speeding car lost control and swerved into a swamp.  Barely two days earlier, another crash on the same road had claimed three lives and left scores nursing injuries  following reckless driving and over speeding.

Previous research has already shown that area-wide traffic calming has the potential to prevent road traffic deaths and injuries.  There are a number of area-wide traffic calming mechanisms to choose from as a way of promoting road safety, such as the creation of one way streets, changes at junctions, or speed humps, traffic lights, road signage, road surface treatment to make roads slip-proof, to mention but a few. With the road sector continuing to exist as the ultimately one of the most important modes of transportation worldwide, this is partly why road traffic deaths and injuries continue to rise. The beauty about this all is that the causes of road traffic crashes/accidents are known to us and they (crashes/accidents) are easily preventable if we all elect to strictly adhere to road safety mechanisms and interventions to reduce the carnage on our roads.