Arusha — Traffic lights or robots first introduced outside the British House of Parliament in 1868 have been installed in Arusha for the first time last week causing chaos, accidents, frustration and astonishment.

Like a gospel convention, thousands of Arushans every evening since October 9 have been attending the Sanawari intersection to witness what they believe to be a marvel of technology but at the same time Tanzania Road Authority's (Tanroad) "criminal negligence."

Three of the four roads of the intersection have been installed with traffic control lights and the fourth, the Sanawari road, one of the busiest but most neglected, has been left without control signals.

The omission has not only meant that the whole investment and initiative is useless but has warranted a killing field, something beyond imagination.

To most people unless the "engineers" who have designed the system go back to the drawing board, the exercise is bound to be a catastrophic failure.

According to motorists and pedestrians who use the road, there are many faults to the system. Traffic control lights, they say, are supposed to make traffic movement easier and accident free.

"What they have done is unbelievable. The traffic jam now goes as far as Phillips on the eastern side and Mianzini on the western side, about a kilometre each direction. Pedestrians and drivers are scared of being knocked down. What kind of technology is this"? Asked Samwel Tesha a taxi driver who docks at Sanawari taxi stand.

A pedestrian, Melita Mollel said: "I'm surprised by the technology that threatens lives. It instructs you to cross the road but as soon as you start moving you're surrounded by cars, all scrambling to knock you down."

Indeed those who computerized the system's lights were negligent or deficient in knowledge and expertise. There are times when all lights go red and all movement stops. Suddenly, they all go green and the whole intersection becomes chaotic.

"They are playing with people's lives. Had it not been for Traffic policemen who have been intervening, all day long, this junction would have been a pool of human blood," said a woman who identified herself by the name of Mama Elisha.

Jackson Laizer another taxi drivers at Sanawari said traffic lights in any city are a good idea but when the system is installed recklessly it becomes a problem. " How can traffic lights become the cause of traffic jams? They are supposed to ease traffic flow."

He said he was surprised to find vehicles being allowed to go one direction for five minutes but given green lights to the opposite direction for less that a minute.

To add insult to injury, when Tanroad and Municipal officials realized that they have grossly blundered by excluding one busy road from the traffic control lights system at the four-road intersection, they simply erected traffic posts with signs disallowing vehicles from Sanawari entering into town.

A sign post now prohibits vehicles from Sanawari to turn right towards Nairobi and to drive straight ahead toward the AICC. A vehicle from Sanawari cannot also turn towards Moshi without dangerously interfering the traffic flow because there's no control light that allows such movement.

As if to put Tanroads to shame, pedestrians and drivers have catalogued an array of errors and that have been the dominant topic in Arusha for the past one week.

Some signs also need to be painted on the roads surface. After a hilarious but deadly confusion, on the October 9th, 10th and 11th road paints were put in place to keep traffic at a distance when approaching the robots. The hitch again is that they could not paint on the awfully dilapidated, dusty and pothole- riddled Sanawari road as it has no tarmac and one cannot paint on dust.

"They have eyes but they do not see. If there are any engineers in the Municipal Council or Tanroads, which school did they attend? They should be charged with criminal negligence," said an irate Nairobi bus driver who declined to be identified.

An employee of AUWSA who must drive on that road daily to go to his place of work said: "You don't cut off people from going into the city because their road is bad, you fix that road and integrate it into the system."

For others however, the biggest problem of the traffic control lights is that they have been placed too close to two bus stands, a taxi docking area and a push cart station on the Sanawari road..

When approached for comment, a municipal council official quickly disassociated the council from the mess. He told the Arusha Times that it was Tanroads who put in place the traffic lights.

A Tanroads official contacted on Monday categorically denied comment saying that he was not a spokesperson. He said that the person who could comment about the Sanawari traffic lights saga was out of town.

Most people of Arusha, with an urban population of about 400,000 had however, never seen traffic lights before. Drivers, pedestrians and even some of the traffic police men saw the robots as a lights puzzle. "It is now green, in a few seconds it will be yellowish and then red and cars will stop," an elated man was heard telling scores of people who were just about to cross the road. Arusha became an urban centre in the late 1930s and since then traffic has been flowing reasonably well with the help of traffic police officers at some intersections.

Multitudes of people heading to a gospel crusade last Saturday presided by an Irish preacher,

Dr. Cecil Stewart ended up their journey at Sanawari. They rejoiced watching the traffic lights mystery at Sanawari. Like the evangelist's theme "Deciding Your Destiny", the perverted deadly robots seemed also to decide the destiny of many Arushans.

Staff Reporter And Edward Selasini