All is set to kick-off the nationwide enforcement of the new speed limits come April 1, 2016, according to Hygneus Omeje, Lagos State sector commander, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC).
In an exclusive interview with BusinessDay, Omeje said: “The speed-limiting devices are electronic devices that if properly installed in a vehicle at a calibrated preset speed can check over-speeding. If a driver accelerates and gets to that preset speed, it doesn’t matter how he presses the accelerator, the vehicle cannot go beyond that speed that has been preset.”
The whole essence of the enforcement, he said, is to ensure that the driver does not go above the stipulated speed limit, as there are categories of speed, depending on the vehicle and the road being used.
“The speed is related to first and foremost the category of the vehicle that you are driving. Second the type of the road that you are using. For example, a private car within a build-up area is supposed to go on maximum speed limit of 50km/hour. The same private car on a highway should go on 80km/hour, and the same private car on express road should go on a 100km/hour.
“Taking the upper limit as our guide, we expect commercial fleet operators who are on the expressway not to exceed 90km/hour. Tankers and trailers are expected to do 60km/hour,” Omeje said.
The intervention is coming at a point when the agency has observed consistent increase in over-speed related crashes. “Our statistical computation revealed that speed violation accounts for 50.8 percent of the crashes we had in 2014 and 2015. We had noticed that speed violation is something that we really need to check, if we must actualise the global action of reducing over-speeding by 50 percent.
“It is because we discovered that over-speeding is one of the major speed factors that are responsible for the fatalities that are associated with crashes we witnessed in the country,” Omeje said.
According to Omeje, the speed limit devices can be purchased from agency-licensed vendors selected through an open bidding process after their equipment had been verified through a series of test. Those vendors, who were successful, were given certification to operate. Some of the approved vendors, which are about 24 in number, include Cable Car Corporation, Central Vehicles Services Limited, Jendies Automobiles Limited, Safe Rider Speed Limited, etc.
“On our enforcement part, we are going to have radar guns with which if a commercial fleet is approaching and he beats the gun at our speed diagram that we already set, we will pick the person. That means the person does not have any speed-limiting device.
“We started this campaign since 2012. So, it is not a new thing. Everybody is well sensitised. Go to National Union of Road Transport Workers and ask at the state level, they had a full house summit for it. Everybody is aware and we have always been on air still campaigning.
“From January to April 1, we will still be doing what we call advisory enforcement; that is, an agent can stop somebody and remind the person that ‘April 1 is coming.’
“So, from April 1 it will be an offence to drive without the speed-limit device in your vehicle,” he said further.
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