One of the most worrying features of the Jammeh regime was the free license security officers close to him or working at around him had, to do just anything. And these include carefree driving in crowded areas and causing accidents and unnecessary deaths among the population.
Similarly, the same carefree attitudes have led to accidents that claimed the lives of the very people perpetrating it on the roads.
We have to learn from these and allow sanity to rule whether we are driving a security vehicle or not.
The number of fatalities from accidents involving security vehicles in the recent past should now warrant frank discussion about the safety and conduct of security vehicles and drivers.
Almost every year, an accident involving security vehicles would claim lives. The latest claimed two dear lives.
As we condole with the families of the dead, we urge for an urgent discussion and action to assess what leads to these unfortunate deaths and how to prevent them.
It is common place to see security vehicles often filled with military or police officers driving at breakneck speed wading through thick traffic often with the help of blasting sirens in the name of rushing to an urgent operation or one mission or the other.
In fact, security vehicles whether in a convoy or not are generally almost always in a hurry with little or no attention to traffic and speed limit regulations, manifesting an entitlement to freely roam all sides of the road at top speed. This is uncalled for and even self-destructive.
While it may be important that they arrive on time for whatever operation or escort, it is imperative that security officers be concern with their own safety first and others using the road.
No mission should warrant unnecessary and dangerous speeding as this could lead to accidents with catastrophic consequences. We are not anyway suggesting that these recent accidents are caused by over speeding, but we have to count them as road accidents and according to the police traffic division most Gambian accidents are caused by poor driving including over speeding.
Indeed, it is macabre ironical that security officers whose job it is to save the people from calamities should themselves ignore basic safety traffic rules such as reasonable speeding on roads.
In light of these unfortunate incidents, we call on the security heads responsible to work on a new rules of engagement for drivers or head of operations and missions to get them to respect speed limits and drop this self-entitlement of “we are on a very important mission,” mentality. Security vehicles are no different from any other vehicles and must respect speed limits.
