Paying N35,000 For Speed Limiter Is Extorting Inter-State Motorists—Fleet Owners
A cross-session of Fleet owners plying inter-state routes that are based in Lagos have expressed anger over what they described as being a form of extortion, charging them up to N35,000 to buy Speed Limiter for their buses. The scheme is limited to vehicles plying from state to state and not vehicles doing their business inside a particular state.
Speaking with many of them in parts of Lagos, they argued that the amount is very high compared to the current recession in the economy.
It would be recalled that the policy introduced by the Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC) came into force from October 1, this year.
Though all of them described the scheme as very good considering the spate of road accidents caused by over-speeding, they saw the cost as too high and called on the agency to review the price downward.
In a statement, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has issued about 2,800 commercial vehicles tickets of fine on take-off of the enforcement of speed limiting device nationwide.
A speed limiting device sometimes referred to as governor’ is used for controlling the speed of a vehicle or a device used to measure or regulate the speed of a vehicle.
In a statement signed by Bisi Kazeem, head Media Relations and Strategy of the Corps, Boboye Oyeyemi www.cmtrading.com, Corps Marshal, FRSC said the enforcement was not to inflict pain on motorists and road users but for commercial vehicle owners to voluntarily imbibe the culture of its usage and key into it.
He said the advisory enforcement is a sort of subtle force that entails stopping commercial vehicles, verifying electronically whether the device was fixed and giving citation to offenders for corrective purposes.
Kazeem noted that the coming days, the leadership of the organized transport unions such as NURTW, NUPENG PTD, NARTO, RTEAN LUBOAN shall be involved in the advisory enforcement by joining FRSC top officers to patrol.
The device does not allow the driver to accelerate beyond the stipulated speed limit by law as has been programmed in the vehicle. So no matter how the driver tends to accelerate, the pre-set speed limit will not be exceeded.
He therefore advised commercial vehicle operators to continually patronize the device as there was no going back on its full and real enforcement come January 2017.
FRSC regretted that despite all efforts to reduce accident rates and casualties across the country a lot of lives were still being lost to road traffic accidents in the country.
Oyeyemi, Corps Marshal, recalled that over 40 lives were lost to road accidents recently in three crashes in different location in the country, adding that most of the accidents happened at night and due to over speeding.
Dr. Oyeyemi, who expressed worry over the development, regretted that despite the clear evidence that speeding has been responsible for most road accidents in the country, and needed to be prevented, regretted that some people were still kicking against their efforts to check the menace with the introduction of speed limiter.
He said: “I can tell you, that all the people calling for spider technology, which simply mean the use of camera, should stop deceiving Nigerians,”.
“It is not the FRSC that should install speed cameras. Even if speed cameras are installed on the road, have they considered the issue of vandalisation by unpatriotic elements.
“All those sponsoring spider technology are not sincere to Nigerians as they may be looking at their business interests rather than safety of Nigerian road users. My concern in the whole thing is to save lives as 65 percent of the crashes on Nigerians roads involve commercial vehicles..”
