16 people lost their lives in a bus accident. According to the initial reports, the incident took place at night in Oyam, a district in northern Uganda. As per the information available from the police, it could be understood that the bus rammed into truck.
The police have issued a statement in the public interest. The statement said that the police traffic and general duty visited the scene immediately after receiving the report and confirmed 11 people died on the spot while four others died at the hospital.
The statement also said that an uncounted number of injured casualties were rushed to a nearby local hospital and some of them were in critical condition.
Uganda Red Cross Society visited the site and has also given out details about the accident and data on the injured and dead. Later one more dead body was found while inspecting the wrecked bus. This added to the report of deaths reached an overall number of 16.
The people who lost their lives were the passengers of the bus that was traveling to Gulu from the Capital city of Kampala in a commuter bus. As the incident took place at night most of the passengers of the bus were sleeping and some of the people who lost their life passed away in sleep. The commuter bus had crashed at the Adebe trading center and into a truck that was carrying goods.
The authorities have not yet released any statement about the cause of the accident and are assumed to be carrying out an investigation before giving out a credible report.
Although, as per the first investigation report, it is said that the cause of the accident was the carelessness on the side of the truck driver. The reports say that the truck driver had parked the goods-loaded truck not following the road laws. There is also mention that the truck driver has failed to put up any warning signs.
It could be regarded that the bus driver who was not expecting such an act might have not seen the truck parked and might have directly crashed into it. Otherwise, he might have seen the truck but it might have been too late before he could do anything.
The reported incident adds to the already existing road safety concerns in Uganda. The statistics show that the number of deaths that happen on the roads of Uganda has been on a hike recently. A police report that came out on the 3rd of January throws light on the data of deaths, injured, casualties, and accidents that take place on the public roads of the country.
As per the report, which is the analysis of the road incidents of the nation in a period between Dec 30 and Jan 1, it was released that there have been 104 road accidents in total which made 149 people the victims of it. The number of deaths that have been registered was a total of 35. 114 victims of the cause had sustained serious injuries. Among the 104 road accidents, 49 of them were of serious nature while 27 maintained a minor status.
The number of road dangers in Uganda has been alarmingly on a rise. On average the country registered more than 20,000 road accidents which resulted in more than 2,000 people losing their lives. The road division authorities had warned people that nighttime is to be considered an accident-prone time.
The police views that the main cause of all such vehicle collisions was the reckless driving pattern of the travelers. The unsafe driving on roads has resulted in about 20 fatal crashes, 39 critical injuries, and the registration of 17 minor accidents.
While diving deep into the road traffic incidents of the nation considering the incidents of the past 5 years it was established that the fatal ones and casualties have had a rising trend when compared to the previous year, respectively.
The fact that Uganda has the profile of a low and middle-income country is adding to the severity of the crisis. The financial stability of the country could not be balanced as the spike in Road Traffic Incidents (RTI) adds to its burden of it. The United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011 – 2020 brought Uganda under it and the authorities introduced measures to minimize the number of accidents.
The government of Uganda has established guidelines under the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Data Analysis (PRISMA). Following this, the causes were classified and placed under different categories such as mortality, trauma care, trauma etiology, trauma registry and communication, cost, intervention, and treatment for final analysis.
Research studies were conducted and review articles were published in each category. The content of the research made the conclusion that the risk factors were injury physiology, cause, victims, crash type, gender, setting, economic status, and age.
Suggestions to initiate advanced pre-hospital trauma care services, proper training and licensing of motorists and cyclists, upskilling and training of lay responders, surveillance and enforcement of road traffic and safety laws, increasing funding and human resources, and promoting the use of helmets among motorcyclists were made.
