Psychiatric
tests have been recommended for several traffic offenders arrested at
several points in time in the country as a way of bringing sanity to the
roads.
File Photo
The Federal Road Safety Corps on Thursday said it had in the last
three months referred 2,143 drivers to specialist hospitals to ascertain
their mental health status.
It said the motorists were among 2,360 arrested for various traffic
offences in Abuja as part of its Operation Cobra, an initiative for the
arrest and prosecution of motorists found to have violated traffic
rules towards restoring sanity to the nation’s highways.
The Corps Marshal, FRSC, Mr. Boboye Oyeyemi, gave the figures in
Lagos on Thursday at a press briefing to mark the beginning of the 10th
‘Don’t Drink and Drive Campaign’ co-sponsored by the Nigerian Brewery
Plc to improve road safety nationwide.
Oyeyemi, who spoke through the Corps’ Public Education Officer, Mr.
Bisi Kazeem, also said between February 1, 2017 and September 20, 2017,
66,774 vehicles were found to have speed-limiting devices out of
165,040 commercial vehicles stopped by the FRSC patrol teams for routine
checks, translating to 40.5 per cent compliance.
According to the corps marshal, the result of the psychological
evaluation enables the FRSC “to take appropriate action in line with
extant law.”
He said traffic offenders were stopped and “issued referral notes to visit designated hospitals for psychological evaluation to ascertain their mental health status.”
“As an intelligence-driven government agency, corps’ findings
at the early part of the year identified some road vices such as traffic
light violation, route violation, use of phone while driving and
reckless driving as the most prevalent among other causative factors of
road crashes,” Oyeyemi added.
The FRSC chief executive said since October 1, 2016 when the corps
received the presidential directive to commence a nationwide advisory
enforcement of the speed- limiting device installation, non-compliant
drivers were not issued fine tickets but only “advised to install this device.”
The Nigerian Breweries, in a speech delivered by its Corporate
Affairs Adviser, Mr. Kufre Ekanem, said the DDD campaign involved
enlightenment rallies for drivers in various cities, media messages with
free medical checks and eye test for motorists.
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