Roads they say were made for journeys not destination. As such, roads should lead you somewhere. Cameroon has witnessed fatal accidents over the months across the national territory thus leaving lives to nothing and at the mercy of reckless drivers. Either roads are too congested or there are no road signs to start with. In major towns like Douala, cargo trucks share the same roads with motorbikes, taxis, personal cars as well as pedestrians. This increases the risk of accidents.
Most roads in Cameroon are characterized by potholes while others are simply too small to accommodate the increasing number of taxis, heavy duty trucks, buses and military cars treading on a single road. Coupled to this most of these roads don’t have speed brakes that can help limit the speed of drivers. Roads with no speed brakes to control the speed of drivers will definitely lead to over speeding which is another cause of accidents in Cameroon.
The presence of potholes is due to the use of diminishing or insufficient materials to build these roads. This situation is made worst given that the culture of maintenance is still a far cry in Cameroon.
The presence of heavy-duty trucks in major roads which also have motorbikes, taxis, and pedestrians, is another cause for concern. A Presbyterian Church pastor and his wife were crushed by two logs of woods which fell from a heavy-duty truck in Ebolowa, Southern Cameroon.
Apart from bad roads other human causes of road accidents accounts for about 70% according to the Cameroon government. This is occasioned by over speeding, lack of driving skills, drivers plying the road in a drunken state and a host of others. Meanwhile about 20% of road traffic accidents is due to break failure and tire puncture. In 2017 WHO reported that 6560 people died as a result of road traffic accidents. The adjusted rate for death injuries was 35.06 %, 100,000 of population, which ranked Cameroon number 28 in the world in terms of road traffic accidents. Cameroon records 16,583 road accidents each year causing the death of 1000 people according to the government and approximately 6000 according to World Health Organization.
