Accidents on our roads in Nigeria anecdotally kill more people than the dreaded HIV/AIDS. Not a few households in the country can say they have not lost someone at one time or the other through road traffic accident. I felt concerned after reading an article that 1,025 drivers were arrested during the Sallah festive period for various traffic offences like overloading and dangerous driving, and are to be sent to a psychiatric hospital for the determination of their level of sanity. The Guardian in its Editorial of 14^th October 2008 buttressed the issue about Nigerian drivers and their fitness to drive. There has also been an initiative by the Nigerian Breweries working to reduce the impact of alcohol. Whatever the cause of a driver not being fit to drive, I think it is a thing of joy that something is being done to sanitize the driving system in the country by those who have been saddled with the responsibility and cities including Lagos and Port Harcourt are taking the lead. My major fear is that like any Nigerian project, the big headlines will come to sell the papers and then the whole thing will go business as usual.

Not taking away the good side of the programme, I could not stop wondering why we have taken this long to do this. Also is this going to be replicated every where in the country or only in Lagos and Port Harcourt? As far as I know, mental health is just one of the health aspects to be looked at when considering fitness to drive so do we have to go to the psychiatrist alone? As well as driver variables, safe driving requires good roads, well lit roads, appropriate road signage and above all the law adequately applied without fear or favour when drivers do the wrong things and fall short of the law.

Driving to most city people is an every day activity whether as work or in-order to go to work or business. For those who do it as work, the sort of assessment that needs to be made to determine fitness is therefore similar to that required when determining fitness for work in other spheres of life, fitness to travel or the scope for a return to the full activities of daily living after a major illness, rather than the normal clinical priority of diagnosing an illness in order to treat it correctly. I am therefore not against taking drivers for psychiatry assessment when found to have fallen foul of traffic rules but we need to know what we want to get out of the assessment and this appears like treating an illness rather than preventing it. Questions will arise as to what we are going to do with the result of the assessment and who will pay for it. That is why the Nigerian Breweries initiative needs to be embraced. We need to have a change in our mindset about how things should be done.

It is true that diagnosed mental ill-health, may lead to patterns of behaviour such as impulsiveness, indecisiveness, excessive anger, loss of or excessive risk aversion and changed levels of arousal, all of which can increase the risks of driving. All are also frequent among drivers without defined psychiatric health problems.

Safe driving requires the driver to have effective and reliable control of the vehicle, the capacity to respond to the road, traffic and other external clues knowledge of and a willingness to follow the ‘rules of the road’. Drivers consciously learn all these skills to pass the driving test and I believe some of the people who drive in Nigeria have the ability to achieve a satisfactory standard.

Sound advice on fitness to drive is therefore derived from an assessment of the driver’s risk of crashing because of any health-related impairments that are likely to reduce their ability to drive safely now and in the future. In the UK, doctors employed by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) with training in occupational medicine make many of the assessments of serious illness and fitness to drive.

The questions to ask in Nigeria are:  

1 How can drivers drive safely when they do not go for driving tests to gain their drivers’ license? I may be wrong but many Nigerians have gotten their licenses without a driving test.

2. How can there be safe driving when the vehicles are not road worthy? We all know that most vehicles do not have any documented service history to show.

3. How can drivers drive safely when there are no road signs? Even where the signs are available they are difficult to read or not obeyed.

4. Why will there be safe driving when no one can be held liable for an accident? There are no insurance covers for most vehicles. Even when such covers are available, they are provided by road side third party insurance companies that can not be traced in cases of liability payments.

5. How many Nigerians drivers have been held liable for drink driving? Drinking and driving is the in thing. This can be witnessed over weekends when drivers are heavily drunk and are behind their steering wheels. How many driving licenses have been seized or suspended for drink driving?

Coming back to health, any condition that impairs perception, cognition (including alertness, attitude to risk, recall) or movement function has the potential to interfere with and impair driving and make it less safe. The road surface and its contours will have a big effect on car control. The driver needs to perceive changing conditions in order to respond to them appropriately. Non-visual clues such as noise, bumps and inertial effects can be important. Dark and unlit roads will pose problems if the driver has impaired visual contrast or dark adaptation is impaired. Congested roads pose very different problems from empty ones. Drivers need to anticipate the behaviour of their fellow road users. Precise car control is more important. Interactions with other vehicles and their drivers are the predominant skills required.

Therefore, though driver variables are the major determinant of the risk of a crash, even in the absence of any specific health-related impairment, arousal and factors that affect it, such as fatigue, alcohol and certain drugs (whether prescribed, over the-counter or non-therapeutic) all influence a driver’s performance. So, one can say that health-related impairments are only one contributor to reduced driving performance and are only responsible for a fraction of the total risk. The nature of the driving task and the features of any impairing health condition influence the way in which the risks of conditions need to be assessed, and the advice to be given.

Therefore, I would say that though the FRSC has started a good work, they need to ensure that systems are in place especially with regards to driver assessment. There should be a proactive way of preventing these drivers from getting on the road. Apart from the efforts from the producers of alcohol as exemplified by Nigerian Breweries, it may be useful to breathalyse drivers at major motor parks, have drivers undergoing appropriate testing before being issued a drivers license and ensuring that all cars on the road are appropriately insured. There should be a central databank to which a Road Safety Officer can telephone and get information on a vehicle giving the vehicle registration or insurance number or road worthiness certificate. Finally the people working to ensure drivers are doing the right thing should be adequately remunerated in order for them not to fall victim of bribery.

Robot  # 1 | 23.02.2009 10:57

Accidents on our roads in Nigeria anecdotally kill more people than the dreaded HIV/AIDS. Not a few households in the country can say they have not lost someone at one time or the other through road traffic accident. ...Read the full article.

aguabata  # 2 | 23.02.2009 14:54

we are a bowl of doughnuts, its funny that as the Licensing authority issues thousands of licenses everyday they are so aware that not a single one of us i repeat not a single one of us went on a driving test. Imagine the income that could be generated if driving practice and tests are enforced, first of, driving instructors will be trained and certified in every local government, the benefits are catholic to be mentioned, but we are so sinful that if your assessor fails you, you might just settle him/her, this is one thing all new policies should focus on and find a way to checkmate.

liloldlady  # 3 | 23.02.2009 20:16

=aguabata;329219>we are a bowl of doughnuts, its funny that as the Licensing authority issues thousands of licenses everyday they are so aware that not a single one of us i repeat not a single one of us went on a driving test. Imagine the income that could be generated if driving practice and tests are enforced, first of, driving instructors will be trained and certified in every local government, the benefits are catholic to be mentioned, but we are so sinful that if your assessor fails you, you might just settle him/her, this is one thing all new policies should focus on and find a way to checkmate. Please speak for yourself. To get my Nigeria Drivers license, The VIO, tested me himself, for reasons I will not go into here. Hill start, 3 point turn. reverse parking, parallel parking, lane control(yet there was no bloody lane markings, just driving between 2 palm stumps on the ground)the whole nine yards. preparing for my test, made me a proficient driver. I was tested very very rigorously before I got my license.

Dapxin  # 4 | 23.02.2009 20:35

The fact that you are having this debate portends something about the government sha....I no be city boy, but village boys too get sense small...:p Hope its not another Tinapa in the making sha. I just think resources can be on an 80/20 focused on say hospitals, maybe the railway altho any long term decongestion strategy to lagos is frankly a necessity too but I suppose that cannot happen without properly focusing on the bigger Nigerian problems... afterall, Lagos just happen to be the melt point of our ....

nijalaw  # 5 | 24.02.2009 09:05

=liloldlady;329373>Please speak for yourself. To get my Nigeria Drivers license, The VIO, tested me himself, for reasons I will not go into here. Hill start, 3 point turn. reverse parking, parallel parking, lane control(yet there was no bloody lane markings, just driving between 2 palm stumps on the ground)the whole nine yards. preparing for my test, made me a proficient driver. I was tested very very rigorously before I got my license. liloldlady, When was this? It couldn't have been recently as you would have looked foolish for wasting your time. It took me a year & half to get my driving license. I failed 2ce. Back then in the mid 80's you would get your learners permit & drive for 6 months & then only are you eligible for a test. I failed the first time on the highway code as I did not bother to study it, 6 months later the second time I was failed for overconfidence & gladly 6 months on I passed. I proudly tell this story all the time as it shocks a lot of people. I can get a driving license these days in 24 hrs for even a 3 year old. What a shame. Over 90 percent of people driving on our roads did not go through the mill to get their licenses & it's the major reason for the carnage & chaos on our roads.