14,300 Lagos Drivers Are Partially Blind, Says Expert

 

 How will you feel if you suddenly discover that the driver of the bus you have boarded is blind? In Lagos, it has been discovered that a large percentage of drivers, both private and public are suffering from different degrees of eye defects that have made them to be partially blind.
According to the Lagos State Drivers’ Institute LASDRI, which has trained about 65,000 drivers since August 2009, about 22 per cent of the trained drivers or 14,300 were discovered to be partially blind.

The law establishing the institute came into being in 2007 but LASDRI commenced operation on August 25h, 2009, with the sole aim of ensuring improved road safety culture on the roads.

Mr. Ayodeji Oyedokun, is the Chief Executive Officer CEO, LASDRI, while speaking with Vanguard on the activities of the institution for over four years, stated: “We are all aware of the fact that there are so many drivers with drivers’ license who never had any formal training in driving technology. We are aware of the fact that makes people to rush for driver’s license, which is mainly for an identification document.

“What we are saying in essence, is that there are so many people driving out there that are not supposed to owe drivers license because they did not pass through any formal training. This had led to a lot of carnages on the highway, traffic snarl and jam, with resultant effect of gaseous emission into the atmosphere, which ultimately leads to health hazards, and loss of man hours, because they do not know the rules guiding the use of highway.

“In the highway transportation system, there are three main factors that interplay; the human being which is the driver, the environment-road and the vehicle, it is the human factor that is key to the severity or fatality of road crashes. Therefore, it is the human being that needs to be worked on in terms of competence, fitness, mental alertness, level of eye sight, because driving is about seeing and being seen, hence, the government decided to set up LASDRI.”

According to LASDRI boss, before the commencement of operation, various researches were carried out where it showed that 75 percent of auto crashes were due to human errors.