Most road crashes in Ghana are preventable and rooted in driver behaviour, road safety advocate David Abunya said on Tuesday, warning that speeding and indiscipline are pushing fatalities higher.
“These are not accidents. They are consequences of choices we make every day,” he told the Asaase Breakfast Show, putting most recent crashes down to excessive speed, wrongful overtaking and flouted traffic rules.
Abunya said drivers routinely break legal limits of 100 kilometres per hour on motorways and 50 in towns, and ignore tighter limits near schools, hospitals and markets. He put the share of crashes tied to such behaviour at about 90 per cent.
He said official figures pointed to more than 1,000 deaths between January and March, a count he believes is understated because rural fatalities often go unrecorded. National data show Ghana lost 2,949 lives on the roads in 2025, an 18 per cent rise on the year before.
Motorbike riders and untrained drivers were among the biggest contributors, he said, alongside vehicles abandoned on highways without warning signs. He urged stricter enforcement, a return to routine checks at transport terminals, and road safety lessons from an early age.
Abunya also called for easing the financial pressures that push commercial drivers to speed. If the trend holds, he warned, Ghana could pass 3,000 road deaths by the end of the year.
