Who wants okada back?

The gimmicks of Jimi. Riding okada to a rally was somebody’s big idea in 2015? I think this gimmick is coming late in the day. Many of those who opposed okada ban on major highways in those days have had adequate time to compare the chaos of yore and with the relative order of today. Most won’t want a throw back! Certainly not me.

The roads still retaining okadas are Lagos' most unappealing. Has anybody been to Mile 2 by Fatgbems/NNPC filling stations of late? I was there on Saturday. It is a living nightmare. Apparently, the police aren’t enforcing the ban around there. As a pedestrian, you cannot find a safe place to cross the Expressway. Every inch of the road is taken up by okada riders soliciting passengers. Motorists have to be extra careful to navigate without knocking over a cyclist. Then, I recall the madness of okadas taking one-way on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway in those mad days. SMH.

That menace is exactly what someone who wants to win an election shouldn’t be associating with. 

Danfo driver goes nude to evade arrest



The driver stripping off his clothes. Credit: Punch

When you exasperatedly shout ‘were’ (madman) to a reckless danfo driver in Lagos, more often than not, you are stating a fact, not necessarily insulting him. Many of them deserve an appointment with experienced psychiatrists.

The Punch reports this morning an interesting incident that demonstrates this. A  LASTMA team apprehended a commercial bus driver at Palm Groove for picking passengers on the road.

To evade arrest, he rips off all his clothes including boxers, putting the officers in a dilemma as to what to do next. Unsure of how to deal with the man, they decided to take pictures of his vehicle and number plate and let him go.

The same driver, described as an old man had earlier tried a trick that was not successful. Upon arrest, he had brought a bowl from inside his bus that contained a substance with an awful smell. The LASTMA officers, policemen and commuters in the vicinity reportedly took to their heels to avoid the stench.

But one of the officials came back and stood his ground, wielding a baton and insisting that the man must follow them. The driver then resorted to the nude prank, which paid off, at least for now.

Can you see the mental state of some of the people ferrying commuters to and fro in Lagos? Apparently, commuters had been sitting in that bus with that fetid bowl hidden in a corner of the bus.

This man and many danfo drivers are not fit to be on the road. This is why you must commit your ways to God before living your home every morning.

 

IGP’s tinted glass order is new avenue for extortion

IGP, MD Abubakar

The IGP stopped his men from mounting random road blocks across the country when he assumed duties, and voila, the incidents of police shooting bus conductors and passengers over N20 bribe nose-dived. He received accolades for the move. Now he is undoing the achievement he made in that regard with his latest order to his men to impound vehicles with any type of tinted windows.

Just drove past the men in black arguing with a gentleman in a sparkling Honda Accord 2008 model at Opebi Link road intersection. The argument was intense in the scorching sun. I could only imagine that it had to be about the car’s lightly tinted back windows.  Abi, that’s the only reason policemen can randomly stop motorists on a busy road now.

When the man was done blowing grammar, he would either let his car be impounded or call his accusers aside and ‘resolve’ the matter amicably, because like it or not, those policemen are on a legal duty, backed by the order of the IGP.

The IGP has simply given a new meal ticket to his boys. In the confines of his cosy office, he may threaten fire and brimstones against his men who extort motorists, but that is his own reality. The reality in the scorching sun outside is that only saints would turn down an irresistible settlement terms offered by an affluent gentleman in a posh Honda Accord. And I think we are all agreed the men of the Nigeria police force are no saints.  

Confessions of a US traffic cop, lessons for LASTMA

 

Nigerian police officers, LASTMA officials, FRSC men and others involved in road safety and traffic law enforcement have a lot to learn from this American police officer, especially in the area of use of discretion and responsible traffic law enforcement.

Mike Brucks retired from the El Paso Police Department as a traffic cop last May after 22 years and almost 40,000 tickets, by his estimation. He was featured by Yahoo!

 Here are some of his stories from the road and tips for motorists looking to avoid a ticket.

Besides speeding, which is the reason for most tickets, what's most likely to get a traffic cop's attention?

 

Seatbelts, cell phones, red lights, and stop signs. I concentrate on all the things that can cause an accident. There are some cops who write tickets for expired plates, for having no insurance or registration, but you're not going to crash because of any of that. I focused on safety issues—that's what I like to do.

 

Do traffic cops think it's cheating to hide behind billboards?

 

No. You've got a radar detector; you know where we hide. If you are thinking we are hiding somewhere, it's because you're speeding.

 

Do you have favourite hiding places?

 

I stay on the freeway mostly. That's where there are more speeders. I'll park under overpasses, on bridges. I need to be able to start the bike and accelerate to go after someone. If there are a lot of exits, I can miss [a speeder] who can maybe get off at an exit, and then it's too late to catch him.

 

How much leeway do you give someone before writing them a speeding ticket?

 

The speed limit in Texas used to be 60 mph, [and] well, out on the clear road where there's a lot of visibility I give people leeway. I wouldn't write tickets until they got to 80 mph. I've never worked an area where the speed limit drops a lot without warning, what I call a trap. If there's a new speed limit that's lower, it [takes] time for people to get used to it and I don't write tickets there.

 

What can a driver say to get out of a ticket?

 

When someone tells me that a family member has just been sent to the hospital and they're on their way, how can I ticket them for that? I tell them that they're not being safe, that they need to slow down and stay safe. That's about it.

 

I think now it's much more of a rat-race world than it was 30 years ago. The workforce has generated that. People have to be at work on time or risk getting fired, kids have to be picked up and taken places—it's just citizens in a hurry. Ninety-eight percent of the people I stop are law-abiding good citizens, and they say they have no reason to speed. That's an easy ticket. They're not happy, but I could go months without any problems, without anyone cussing me out. I wrote a lot of warnings, too, but it all depends on the situation, if they were being safe.

Are speed limits too low?

 

No, the traffic engineers, at least in Texas, are pretty good. It's not that some parts of the highway are safer for speeding, it's that drivers aren't always paying attention. People die on lonely deserted stretches of road too. There are a lot of times drivers aren't concentrating. They need to understand you're going 100 feet per second on the highway. Above 75 mph things just happen so fast, [whether it's] a flat tire, a coyote, wind, dirt, or rocks. It's not that much better now that cars are safer; reaction times are still the same.

 

What's the toughest ticket you've had to write?

 

I clocked a woman coming down from New Mexico on Highway 54 at 111 mph. She had just been stopped for going 90 mph 15 minutes [earlier] in New Mexico. Everybody has a reason, and I want to know it. I always ask why someone was speeding, and that's just to open things up. I want to know what they're thinking, if they need my help for something. She had been crying, and the tears didn't just start—they'd been going on a long time, you can tell. She was on her way to a motel in El Paso to catch her husband who was shacked up with another woman there, cheating. How do you write a ticket for that?

 

Who's the craziest speeder you've seen?

 

I stopped a guy going 136 mph. I caught him mostly because he thought he lost me. I came up beside him and blocked his front wheel on the curb. The hardest part after that was now I have to be courteous and respectful, although he could have killed someone, and that makes me angry. It's really too bad, he was a good kid, never been in trouble, but now he had to go to jail for felonious evading, and that's really going to wreck his life.

 

When do you not chase a speeder?

 

I clocked a guy on a crotch-rocket bike doing 189 mph. Just let him go. Since police departments began to get sued for chasing speeders, around 1995, there's a fine line. You have to determine if you can catch him, if chasing him will cause an accident for him, for you, for the public. There's no way to catch anyone like that. ..

Stray tyres havoc on Lagos-Ibadan expressway

I've heard stories of stray tyres wreaking havoc on speeding vehicles on the busy Lagos-Ibadan Exressway many times, but have never experienced it.

 

Driving from Berger to Arepo on Friday, I came very close to it.

 

Just a little after Kara bridge, a huge tyre bounced from the median into the Ibadan-bound traffic. It was of the biggest type, and I had no idea if it was rolled by someone or it came off a speeding trailer.

I was probably doing between 80 and 100kph and had barely passed when it actually landed on the fast lane and rolled across the rest of the lanes.

An unfortunate driver collided with it at full speed, smashing the tyre into shreds and wrecking the entire front of the vehicle. But the driver remained calm and managed to let the car coast to a stop. It could have been worse. A wide swerve would have led the driver to lose control, or he could have run into another fast moving vehicle.

The incident serves as a reminder why a motorist should have his two hands firmly on the wheels, especially when doing anything more than 80kph.

At high speeds, when an emergency occurs, such as an unexpected object bounding towards you, you have only nanoseconds to react. Scrambling the second hand to take necessary action may take most of the nanoseconds needed to save the day.

Yes, you sometimes get weary planting both hands on the steering, and yes, it is cool driving with one hand on the steering while planting the second hand on the car window. But an emergency does not serve a prior notice and it could make the difference between life and death.

FRSC to issue commercial drivers licence

Osita Chidoka, Corps Marshal, FRSC

For those who drive to make a living, one more thing to worry about. A new licence just for you is in the making. As from December 3, you will have to get it to escape the wrath of f FRSC.

And for those in Lagos, having this new licence does not save you from the wrath of LASTMA o! You must also get your your LASDRI certification.

Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) said its commercial drivers licence will be launched nationwide on December 3, 2012.

The Kaduna State Sector Commander, Olumide Michael Olagunju, disclosed this yesterday during a stakeholders’ forum in Kaduna.

According to him, the need to issue commercial drivers licence has become imperative following the rate of road crashes, some of which he said were as a result of unqualified commercial drivers who ply the roads. 

Olagunju said that for any driver to be issued the licence, he would have been made to go through medical certification to include, in particular, visual test and mental balance, among others, to ensure that the driver was medically fit to drive.

He warned, however, that upon the formal launching of the commercial drivers licence, any commercial driver who fails to get the licence would be sanctioned appropriately.

FERMA engages 10,000 youths for road maintenance

Reprieve may be coming soon for road users as the Federal Road Maintenance Agency claims to have  engaged about 10,000 youths under the Subsidy Re-investment Empowerment Programme to ensure continuous maintenance of federal roads across the country.

The youths, who work in collaboration with FERMA engineers, are natives of the various communities located close to the highway.

Managing Director of FERMA, Mr. Gabriel Amuche, said in a statement on Thursday that the engagement of the youths was part of Federal Government’s job creation programme under the SURE-P.