Human element accounts for 85% of road crashes as gridlock erodes property values

Human element manifesting in reckless driving, disobedience to traffic signs and laws, dangerous over-taking, over-speeding, etc, account for 85 percent of road accidents in Nigeria, the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has revealed.

Hyginus Omeje, Lagos State sector commander of FRSC, who made this revelation in Lagos, said 9.2 percent and 5.8 percent of the crashes were caused by mechanical and environmental factors, respectively, explaining that whereas mechanical factors relate to the state of the vehicles, environmental factors had to do with the state of the roads.

Omeje, who was a guest speaker at the third edition of the Biennial Breakfast Meeting hosted by Propertygate Investment Company plc, Wednesday in Lagos, also disclosed that in 2013, the corps prosecuted 54 persons for traffic offenses; 16 people were prosecuted in 2014, while between January and September this year, as many as 157 people had been prosecuted.

He attributed the jump from 16 people prosecuted in 2014 to 157 people in the first nine months of 2015 to the corps’ expanded access to magistrate court, which happened when he took over Lagos command in January this year.

The meeting, which had as theme, ‘Anarchy on Our Roads: ‘Where is the Enforcement,’ highlighted possible causes of the madness on Lagos roads, the impact on people and business, and what could be a way out that had brought the commercial city on its knees.

The sector commander stressed that at the centre of the anarchy on the roads was attitude, explaining that an average Lagos motorist was impatient, inconsiderate, desperate and lacking in driving culture, leading to what had become an intractable gridlock.

Apart from the impact on health of motorists, the gridlock also affects value of assets and, according to Adetokunbo Ajayi, CEO of Propertygate, the gridlock has serious impact on property value.

Ajayi noted that, essentially, the need for having roads was to make for quality living, pointing that in Lagos, the reverse was the case as people spent upwards of eight hours commuting to work with the attendant loss of opportunities such as missed job interviews and business engagements.

“We cannot possibly quantify the cost, but apart from loss of promotions in offices and asset degradation, the anarchy on our roads also erodes value of property and curtails development activities in areas that are prone to traffic because people avoid such locations,” he said.

He noted that whereas property value was coming down in a place like Victoria Garden City (VGC), places like Lekki Phase One and Banana Island, where there are still saner traffic situation, enjoyed high property values.

For developers, he said, it is a hard decision to take in terms of where to invest, noting that developments towards Badagry were slowing because the reconstruction and expansion of the Lagos-Badagry Expressway, which attracted much investment interest in that axis, seems to have stopped.

To bring sanity and end the anarchy on the roads, Ajayi and Omeje were agreed on increased education of road users and what they called “Show and Shame” initiative in which traffic offenders should be shown and publicized through the help/collaboration of the media.