Road traffic crashes have become a cause of premature deaths, injuries, and disabilities of our people. Road traffic deaths and injuries have however in turn become a burden on our health system, as well as an obstacle to our efforts to overcome poverty.The impact of road traffic crashes is alarming with the large number of people that have died prematurely, as well as those that have become disabled while a huge medical cost has been incurred in terms of those treated for fatal injuries as a result of road traffic crashes. As a matter of fact, funds that ought to have been used to provide good schools, electricity, potable water, and other economically beneficial facilities are being expended on medical bills. It should be realised that the daily life of every person depends on the road, either to go to work, to school, to do business, and as such a large percentage of victims of road crashes are the young and able bodied men and women in their prime ages who would have contributed immensely to the socio-political and economic growth of the country. Their departure to the world beyond as a result of road deaths creates gaps difficult to fill , while the loved ones and families left behind are made to suffer with the loss of the bread winners. Loss of bread winners, due to road deaths, permanent disabilities, the destructions on our roads and other public utilities, as well as the demand on our health facilities are issues that have serious economic, social, medical and psychological impact on all of us.Journeys and travels that are ordinarily expected to be simple become nightmarish. No one is left out. Old, young, men and women have been victims. Majority of the victims are indeed , either those inside motor vehicles, those riding motorcycles and bicycles or those innocently walking or crossing the roads and knocked down by hit and run drivers.Have you ever noticed several scenarios where school children standing by the side of the road become scared to cross the roads and in some extreme cases, face grave risks while crossing the road' The driver is not ready to give the little children their own right of way , while the motorcycle rider cares less about the safety of our children on the roads.With the glaring reality of the grave situations we are faced with , as the menace of road traffic crashes is fast becoming an epidemic of some sort, there is the need for us to develop a vaccine for this epidemic of road deaths because at every moment, someone, somewhere, is about to be injured, maimed, or out rightly killed in one road crash or the other. The situation is such that, it will be a catastrophe for us as a nation to continue to lose our able bodied men and women, who represent not only the future of their families but of the entire society and the country.Even though, we are faced with competing issues of poverty, power generation , education and other economic problems, we should realise that half of our hospital beds are being taken up by road injury victims with high economic cost hence the need to see road crashes as an epidemic and given the same attention as malaria, tuberculosis and of late, HIV/AIDS.As vaccines have been developed for these diseases, so also must we develop vaccines for this epidemic of road deaths and road injuries now on the scale of scourge as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Much as we are spending on these diseases, money should also be spent on reducing road deaths and road injuries.While efforts are being made to put in place safe road infrastructure, there must be enough funds for the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) to carry out its statutory functions. Finally, if we all wake up to this horrifying waste of human lives and see road safety as a collective responsibility, treated as an economic development priority with political commitment and enough financial resources, then, the interventions would have become effective enough to serve as a vaccine to fight this avoidable epidemic of deaths and injuries on our roads.
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