Wapic tackles road accidents with ‘Safety-on-Wheels’ initiative

In an effort to tackle the menace of causalities and deaths from road accidents, Wapic Insurance Plc has launched ‘Safety-on-Wheels’ campaign in the country.The Managing Director of WAPIC, Yinka Adekoya, who made the disclosure at a media parley in Lagos, noted that accidents on the nation’s roads had taken more lives than the deadly malaria disease.

According to her, the campaign, which commenced February 17, had over 1,000 drivers across Nigeria, who were educated on safe road-use practices, the importance of adherence to road traffic regulations, and appropriate road and vehicle maintenance cultures.

“We are aware that road accidents have far-reaching emotional, financial, and psychological effects on families and the workforce, which in turn, have significant negative effects on socio-economic facets of the society.

“As an organisation, Wapic Insurance is triggered by this awareness to collaborate with other stakeholders to combat this menace with the ‘Safety-on-Wheels’ Initiative. Our plan is to take the campaign across the country starting with Lagos State,” she said.

As a social-focused risk advisory initiative, the ‘Safety-on-Wheels’ campaign, she said, is conceived to empower Nigerians with relevant knowledge and appropriate skills that will reduce road accidents, and raise general awareness about our collective road safety responsibility.

Targeted at raising collective consciousness on the need for road-users to imbibe and practice appropriate road-use culture in Nigeria, the initiative, she maintained, is an educational advocacy campaign executed in partnership with the relevant government agencies including, the Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC), and Lagos State Transport Management Authority (LASTMA).

Adekoya posited that in the ‘Safety-on-Wheels’ initiative, drivers will not only benefit from the road-use trainings, they will also participate in a series of eye and blood pressure tests, conducted by a team of qualified medical personnel to determine their personal physical roadworthiness. She added that participating drivers will undertake specialised trainings, which will equip them with working knowledge of road use and safety rules.

Wapic Insurance explained that it invested in this initiative and has built a credible partnership with state and federal road-safety bodies to provide quality trainings to all beneficiaries. It added that it has also provided them with necessary orientation with a view to raising social advocates for road safety and build a community of people who know that road-use rules are to protect, and not restrain.

With creating sustainable value for the society at the centre of its social responsibility activities, WAPIC said it intends to drive social progression and build safe-road use culture in Nigerians, by ensuring that motorists, passengers, pedestrians and the society at large are knowledgeable about road-use commandments that guide traffic interactions.

By the awareness that safety is not just a personal effort, but depends largely on the safety consciousness of other road users will rise to an impressive level, such that every road user takes responsibility for their own safety and others’ by adopting the right attitude on the road. Wapic Insurance is a socially responsible corporate citizen with focus on thematic areas of Health, Education, Social Empowerment and Environment.