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Obey traffic lights where they work – police

NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept 28 – Traffic Commandant Joseph ole Tito has insisted that police will not control traffic at roundabouts and other junctions that have functional traffic lights.

Tito who spoke to Capital News in his office asserted that police will only control traffic where there are no lights and only act in enforcing the traffic rules where drivers are guided by the traffic lights like they have done in the past one week.

Despite receiving numerous complains from motorists in the past week, Tito countered that it defied logic that police were controlling traffic when that role should be played efficiently by lights and has urged drivers to wake up to the reality that they will face the consequences of disobeying traffic lights.

“We realised that we were doing the wrong thing. This is the only city in the region where you find police controlling traffic where there are functional traffic lights. It beats logic,” he said.

“They will henceforth be required to focus on enforcing the law. I do not want to see a policeman controlling traffic where lights are in sound working condition,” he added.

“Police have made Kenyan drivers drive as if the lights are not working then when they (drivers) go to another city they find problems dealing with lights, they must awaken to this mode of operation,” he further stated.

Tito also assured that the traffic police department will continue with the operation to rid Kenyan roads of un-roadworthy vehicles but also called on the public to volunteer information such as that of speeding drivers.

Tito said: “We have cracked down hard on un-roadworthy vehicles. Most of those we have dealt with have faulty speed governors and we will not allow any defective vehicle on the roads. We also want to call upon the Kenyan public not to get into already loaded vehicles and to report, particularly vehicles to help in saving lives.”

Eighty percent of accidents on Kenyan roads are caused by over speeding.

He said that a consultant had already been engaged to review and propose an upgrade of the driver training curriculum currently administered to drivers in Kenya.

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“The curriculum that we are having in our driving schools is becoming obsolete; apart from the police driving school there is no other institution that trains drivers to drive at night. The government has already hired a consultant studying what we have against what is norm elsewhere in the world. We want to have a uniform curriculum across the country,” revealed the commandant.

Traffic police have recorded 275 deaths in from 1,541 road accidents as at September 27 with most of the dead being pedestrians at 111 while 86 passengers and 25 drivers also perished.

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