The Police Force Spokesman, CSP Olumuyiwa Adejobi has said without mincing words that road accidents or crashes mostly claimed numerous lives on a daily basis is because of recklessness, carelessness, and lawlessness on the highways.
Adejobi, while commenting on traffic offences recently, strongly suggested that the State Houses of Assembly should make laws that will describe and treat intentional and willful road crashes as criminal and not mere traffic offences.
Police Spokesman said many violate traffic rules and cause avoidable and unwarranted deaths. “If you drive against traffic and cause deaths, such should not just be treated as a traffic offence but as a capital criminal offence of murder”.
According to him, “If one refuses to obey the traffic light (robot) and causes deaths, it should be a capital offence (murder case) and not a mere traffic offence.
It’s obvious that many are reckless and cause havoc on our highways because they know they may only be charged for traffic offences, which is simple, and not murder as the case may be”, CSP Adejobi raged.
He noted that once someone drive recklessly and cause deaths on the highway, adding that such person should be charged with murder, not manslaughter, “since it’s intentional”.
CSP Adejobi further stated that “by this charges, auto crash will reduce to a certain level and also recklessness, gross violation of traffic rules on our highways”, he said.
Meanwhile, the situation of road crashes has become source of worry and concern. Each year, thousands of newly injured and bereaved people from every corner of Nigeria added to the countless millions already suffering as a result of road crashes.
Federal Road Safety confirmed that human factors such as overloading, overspeeding, overconfidence etc. contributes mainly to road traffic crashes while Mechanical (brake failure, tyre burst) and Environmental factors (bad roads, weather conds.) are other factors with less contribution.