Corps Marshal kicks off trailer drivers’ retraining

THE Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps, (FRSC) Boboye Oyeyemi, has expressed dismay over the spate of crashes involving tankers and trailers, calling on stakeholders to join hands in the collective efforts to reverse the trend.

He said this while declaring open, on Tuesday, the maiden edition of the annual recertification and retraining programme organised for tanker/trailer drivers at Orile Iganmu, Lagos.

According to the Corps Marshal, the activities of tanker/trailer drivers across the country have attained an unenviable status and become a source of concern to all road safety stakeholders in the country, stating that available statistics indicate that between March and July this year alone, over 120 lives have been lost with more people sustaining various degrees of injury as a result of road traffic crashes involving tankers/trailers.

It is on record that since 2012, tankers/trailers have accounted for over 22 per cent of the total vehicles involved in crashes across the country.

This development is particularly worrisome considering the fact that sizeable percentage of the victims of these crashes fall within the productive age bracket of the national population, which portends great economic implications to the country. “ The situation even becomes more frightening, if one considers the likely increase, if urgent steps are not taken to reverse the trend,” he said.

Oyeyemi described the training programme as one of the practical steps that FRSC as the lead agency for road safety management and administration in the country is taking to address the challenges in order to bring the situation under control, saying that the intervention strategy was fashioned out to particularly curtail the menace which tankers/trailer drivers have brought to the nation in recent time.