During New Year’s festivity, the lives of many are at stake as many people drink a lot to celebrate the end of the year and the beginning of a new one. At this particular moment, Rwanda Traffic Police increases efforts to guarantee road safety so as to avoid stupid road accidents usually caused by drunk drivers and young motorcyclists.
When 2012 was coming in, only 6 road accidents occurred in the whole country, and only 3 died. According to Traffic Police, this resulted from their efforts to maintaining road safety in 2011 which saw a decline in number of accidents compared to 2010.
Statistics from traffic police indicate that at least 1574 road accidents occurred by April 2011 as compared to 1552 accidents in the same period of 2010. However, the number of road accidents dropped in the second quarter of the year 2011 (May to September) to 1467 as compared to 1630 in the same period in 2010.
Accidents continued to reduce drastically in October and November 2011 with police registering just 650 incidents country wide as compared to 855 in same period of 2010. There has also been a significant reduction in the number of fatalities: whereas 355 road users have been killed between January and November this year, 429 people lost lives in the same period in 2010.
The police have also made efforts to improve their response capacity to accidents. Currently each of the three districts in Kigali has a fully equipped patrol team composed of both mounted and foot patrol personnel to be in position to adequately respond to accidents.
