Thika residents sensitise motorists on the need to adhere to traffic rules to reduce road carnage.

Following numerous road accidents along our roads, a group of Thika residents on Saturday took to the road and bus termini along the Thika superhighway and within Thika town to raise awareness on road safety issues and to promote self-regulation among drivers.

The private initiative dubbed “KEEP LEFT UNLESS OVERTAKING & I SUPPORT SAFE DRIVING” was necessitated by the realisation that majority of the road accidents were caused by human error on the part of the drivers especially when they ignored basic traffic rules.

“We realised that most of these accidents are caused by our own mistakes as drivers and if each one of us took individual responsibilities on our actions on the road, we can drastically reduce road carnage in the country. It’s a small gesture but it can help,” explained Fredrick Giturwa alias KINYAMBI 1960, one of the brainchild of this initiative.

“There is so much anger on our roads especially along Thika road when other road users break simple rules that affect others. One of the basic rules on the roads in Kenya is to always KEEP LEFT unless one is overtaking but you find most motorists ignore this rule, causing obstruction,” added Kinyambi.

He explained that  that was the reason they were pasting KEEP LEFT UNLESS OVERTAKING stickers on the rear side of the vehicles so as to keep reminding the driver behind of their responsibility to maintain their lanes.

On his part, James Ng’ang’a who is popularly known on social media circles as JAYMO WA THIKA acknowledged the need for all players on the roads to play their part regardless of whether there was a police officer or not.

“There is a tendency of Kenyan road users to adhere to traffic rules only when there is a police officer on sight. It is as though they are doing it for the law enforcement and not for their own safety. As much as we keep blaming the police for everything bad happening on the road, the buck stops at us,” said Jaymo Wa Thika.

Jaymo added that if all of road users behaved well on the road, the police would have no choice but to follow suit as this would reduce their chances of demanding for bribes.

“Corruption and bribery on the roads thrive because of the disorder among the players. If we all adhered to every traffic rule in the books, it will be very hard for an officer to demand for a bribe. That’s the order of the day in developed countries and even our Rwandan neighbours which is the reason there are very few accidents as compared to Kenya where the rule of the jungle and bullying on the roads has become the norm,” he added.

Thika Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Branch Secretary Mungai Ngige said that, just as in the spirit of community policing, time was ripe for every Kenya to take personal responsibilities for their actions or inaction.

The exercise was a joint initiative by online platforms Road Traffic 411 and Thika Town Today and supported by various well-wishers who included Belasi Developers and IQ Retail with the blessings of NTSA.