The Federal Road Safety Corps has said it will henceforth prosecute drivers and owners of falling trucks as part of measures to curb frequent road accidents caused by articulated vehicles.

The Corp Marshal, FRSC, Mr. Boboye Oyeyemi, had on Sunday arrested a truck driver in the Oluyole area of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway for towing an improperly latched truck and ordered the FRSC, Area Command, to take appropriate action against the errant driver.

The FRSC has also redeployed 40 senior officers, including the Federal Capital Territory and Rivers State sector commanders.

Giving an inkling of what would happen to the arrested truck driver and other offenders, the Zonal Commanding Officer, Zone RS2, FRSC, Mr. Nseobong Akpabio, said, “We will make sure that we prosecute drivers apprehended in Lagos and Ogun for failure to secure their containers properly because we don’t want to continue to see falling containers on the roads, either killing people or not,” he said.

He spoke in Lagos during a stakeholders’ meeting with the Association of Maritime Truck Owners and other stakeholders.

Akpabio said that many lives and properties had been lost over the years as a result of accidents caused by some careless truck drivers.

He said it was discovered that sometimes containers being moved by trucks could drop on other vehicles or passers-by, if not well fastened.

Because this had constituted danger to other people’s lives, Akpbabio said any truck found moving on the road with improperly latched container would be impounded and the driver/owner would be prosecuted.

He said the FRSC had decided to embark on a safety awareness campaign before the enforcement, and that it would be meeting truck drivers operating from the Apapa area of Lagos State on this issue, as well as the need to conduct vision tests to ascertain their fitness to drive.

The President, AMATO, Chief Remi Ogungbemi, said one of the major causes of accidents was bad roads.

He also said human error and fatigued drivers could cause accidents, adding that there was no provision for truck terminals before loading.

Meanwhile, the FRSC has said it has approved the redeployment of 40 senior officers as part of its repositioning process for effective service delivery.

“Details of the recent appointments indicate that six assistant corps marshals and 33 corps commanders were affected in the exercise, which witnessed the redeployment of new zonal commanding officers and sector commanders across the various formations of the corps,” it said in a statement.

 

Source: Punchng.com

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