Ghana: 'Drunk Driving Constitutes 10 Percent Road Crashes'

2 March 2023
Ghanaian Times (Accra)
By Abigail Arthur

Drunk driving has been identified as constituting 10 per cent of the causes of road accidents in the country.

As such, speakers at a capacity building workshop on road safety for journalists in Accra last Thursday expressed worry about the situation, and advocated a reduction in the country's allowable 0.08 per cent of Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) to 0.05 per cent.

That, they said, would lead to a significant reduction in alcohol-related road crashes across the country.

BAC is a measure of the amount of alcohol circulating in the bloodstream or the percentage of alcohol in a person's blood.

The workshop was organised by CUTS International, a non-govern­mental organisation (NGO), in collab­oration with the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) on the theme "Building the Capacity of Journalists on Road Safety Reporting".

Mr Isaac Yaw Obeng, Head of Research, CUTS International, stated that one of the leading causes of death and injury around the world was Road Traffic Accidents (RTC), adding that an estimated 1.3 million people die as a result of road accidents.

"About 93 per cent of RTC cases and injuries occur in developing countries, and 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa are listed in the top 20 RTC prone countries for cases and casualties," he added.

Mr Obeng said the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that a significant risk factor for 27 per cent of all traffic injuries was drunk driving.

"As a significant risk factor, drunk driving therefore becomes a serious public health issue since the amount of alcohol in the blood is directly correlated with the likelihood that a car ccident will occur," he added. Mr Obeng said the punish­ment for the violation of alcohol consumption limit should come along with strong public awareness of the dangers of drunk driving and the existence of enforcement efforts through mass media and other stra­tegic communications.

Ms Mavis Obeng-Mensah, Com­munication Officer, Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety Ghana (BIGRS), em­phasised that drivers with a BAC of between 0.02 and 0.05 had at least a three times greater risk of dying in a vehicle crash.

"Laws that set limits on BAC of 0.05 or lower together with effective enforcement can lead to significant reductions in alcohol related crash­es," she said.

Ms Obeng-Mensah urged journal­ists to add their voices to the advoca­cy for a revision of the BAC level to help minimise road crashes recorded across the country.

Read the original article on Ghanaian Times.

Tagged:
Copyright © 2023 Ghanaian Times. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.

AllAfrica publishes around 500 reports a day from more than 100 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct.

Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. To address comments or complaints, please Contact us.