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Zambia to fit public service vehicles with GPS system to curb accidents

Xinhua, May 7, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Zambian government intends to fit all public service vehicles with the Global Positioning Tracking System (GPS) to monitor the behavior of drivers on the roads in order to reduce road traffic accidents, a senior official said on Friday.

Minister of Transport and Communications Kapembwa Simbao said the fitting of the GPS facilities on public service vehicles would help to significantly monitor the behavior of drivers and cases of over-speeding and eventually to a reduction in accidents.

The government, he said, was concerned with the high cases of road traffic accidents in which the major cause was human error which accounted for 87.3 percent of the accidents.

"From the statistics, it is clear that the main cause of road traffic accidents is human error which can be controlled. Some instances of human error include excessive speed, drinking and driving, fatigue and wrong overtaking, to mention but a few," he said in parliament.

Other causes were vehicle conditions at 1.5 percent and animal conflict at 1.1 percent, while that of road condition was pegged at 0.4 percent, he added.

He further said the government would also introduce a Drivers' Bureau in which incidents pertaining to individual drivers would be recorded to determine appropriate sanctions on those found wanting. Endit