…As FRSC says 30% of truck drivers suffer vision impairments
More details on why articulated vehicles on Nigerian highways always have issues driving at nights have emerged.
Whereas a new report released by Business Hilights Intelligence Unit (BHIU), an independent business research arm of Business Hilights publications has shown that over 80 per cent of long-vehicles plying highways in Nigeria have no reliable headlamps, the Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Boboye Oyeyemi, has disclosed that about 30 per cent of drivers of articulated vehicles have vision problems and can hardly see well at night.
BHIU Report however, indicted the FRSC saying “Staff of the Commission on duty along highways hardly flag down or conduct checks on articulated vehicles especially in the areas of tyre wears, headlamps, brake quality and windscreen visibility standards”.
“On headlamps, even though about 80 per cent of container trucks and tankers do not have reliable headlamps, those that have at all are fixed at strange angles and points in front of the vehicles, thereby causing road space negotiation confusion for other road users at nights.
The report further berated several states’ Vehicle Inspection Offices (VIOs) for giving out vehicle road worthiness certificate on vehicles without due diligence and required tests.
According to the report, “Over 55 per cent of articulated vehicles on Nigerian highways cannot pass a true VIO test and the FRSC is aware of this”.
On the eye conditions of truck drivers, the Corps Marshal, Oyeyemi, said his agency got the data vide a recent research it conducted following frequent road accidents involving trailers/tankers leading to loss of lives.
He further lamented that the FRSC had lost 74 of its officials as a result to reckless acts of some drivers in the last 18 months, spoke on ‘Safety as an imperative for road cargo transportation’ at the Haulage and Logistics Magazine Annual Conference and Exhibition in Lagos.
Oyeyemi averred that “We conducted a vision test on the highway and motor parks and we observed that 30 per cent of the articulated vehicle drivers had vision problems and that is also contributing to the crashes.
“We discovered during the interview session that they think if they use glasses, they will lose their jobs. Employers should be training their drivers and encouraging them to use glasses to enhance their driving skills,” Corp Marshall said.
