GPRTU Considers Double Drivers For Long Distance Journeys …as Kintampo accident driver reportedly dozed off at the wheel

The Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) is said to be treating the ghastly accident that took 30 lives on the Kintampo-Tamale highway on Monday dawn as a wakeup call.

Sources report that the Union has discussed a policy to make it mandatory for members to assign two drivers each to vehicles that travel long journeys.

The policy would require that the two drivers take turns at the steering wheel during such journeys as a way of combating driver fatigue that often lead to accidents.

The tentative decision is coming in the aftermath of the Monday dawn carnage on the Kintampo-Tamale highway that killed 30 people.

At least 20 of the 30 were burned to char by fire that engulfed passengers after a Yutong bus and a Sprinter had collided head-on.

Allegedly, the accident was the fault of the Yutong driver who according one of the six persons who survived the accident dozed at the steering wheel and accidentally veered off his lane into the lane of the Sprinter.

“It appears our driver was asleep, so he veered off his lane into the lane of the Sprinter bus leading to the head-on collision, the vehicles started burning, all I could hear was screaming from the Sprinter bus but there was nobody to help them, lot’s of cars passed, we tried stopping them but none stopped to help,” the survivor whose name is not readily available told Accra based Joy FM today.

The pregnant mother had lost her 12-year-old daughter to the accident that she survived. Like other victims, the daughter was burned beyond recognition in the fire that resulted from the head-on collision.

Transportation consultant, Cecil Gabrah has blamed the fire on extra fuel that one of the vehicles was carrying in a gallon on the vehicle.

According to him, it was reckless and criminal that any of the vehicles involved in the accident was carrying extra fuel in a gallon on the vehicle and that accidental fires such as the one that burnt at least 20 of the 30 casualties of the accident is the very reason it is prohibited for drivers to carry fuel in gallons on the vehicles.

Meanwhile, family members of the victims have been trooping to the Jema district hospital mortuary to identify their relatives. According to reports, it has been difficult identifying the bodies because they are mostly charred.

However, some progress has been made, with the family of a Police officer who was onboard identifying his body. Also, the pregnant woman who survived the accident and blames the Yutong driver for the head-on collision this afternoon told journalists that the body of her 12-year-old daughter has been identified.

The Yutong bus station in Accra has also announced that the names of all the passengers who were onboard the vehicle had been written down and so the list is available for family members to cross-check in Accra.

The hospital has however warned that it will be forced to undertake mass burial if family members do not go and identify the bodies.