Sunday Driver

I know of “Sunday Special” [football played by guys at various backyards in Ghana on Sunday morning], I didn’t know we have “Sunday drivers” too.

On my way from Techiman to Sunyani last Sunday, few meters to the Liberation Barracks, a private saloon car carelessly veered off its lane and nearly ran into ours. Occupants of the said car were nicely dressed three young men. There was no road traffic regulation enforcement officer around. Meanwhile it’s an area you are likely to spot not less than two police officers on weekdays.

The two drivers exchanged insults and went their ways.

What the driver of our vehicle said to us was that the driver of the said saloon car could be one of the “Sunday drivers”. Being curious, I asked, “Do we have Sunday drivers”? He replied, “Yes, oh you don’t know”? “You are not a driver so you will not know, but for us [drivers] we are very much aware”, he added.

At a point, he was very confident and emphatic that a lot of the drivers we see on our roads on weekend, especially Sundays, do not have the licence to drive – they are the “Sunday drivers”. He said majority of them [Sunday drivers] are drivers of private cars. He however lamented that a few of these “Sunday drivers” are also drivers of commercial vehicles.

Who checks the “Sunday driver”? The same police officer who checks other drivers on weekdays, I guess?

If only we could avoid the knee-jerk reactions in this country and be a little proactive, we will be preventing most accidents, injuries and deaths.

I don’t think it is helping the progress of this country where fine experts and professors in various fields will bring their expertise to the table only when there is a disaster, accident or any other misfortune. Ghana would have been better than it is now if our experts in various fields acted the other way round.

Trust me, we will live in this country and watch this “Sunday drivers” thing go on. We will only wake up one day to have reports that an accident has occurred, claiming dozens of lives, only for us to discover that probably the driver involved had no driver’s licence. Conventionally, the whole nation will react to the incidence by jumping to our vibrant airwaves to pour seasoned knowledge on air. After a month or two, we will move on as if nothing had happen. Is that not how we do it here? Maybe that is how God has created us. After all, we queue for hand sanitizers, and are seen practicing preventive health only when there is a scary disease outbreak.

The IGP, his men and whoever matters, should wake up to this call. Let us break the current road traffic regulation enforcement holidays on weekends and help reduce accidents on our roads.

And to you my cherished reader, if you drive, I will admonish that you are very careful when driving; but you need to be extra careful when driving on weekends, especially on Sundays. It is only when you are extra careful that you will be in a better position to correct the wrong of that “Sunday driver”, while driving.

Author: Gbolu Samson
Founder: PHAN Ghana
[email protected]