Skip to main content

Improving road safety in West Africa

Moves are in hand for improving road safety in West Africa.
By MJ Woof February 18, 2025 Read time: 1 min
Overloading of trucks is a major problem for road safety in West Africa – image courtesy of © Tolu Owoeye| Dreamstime.com


Key moves could help boost road safety across West Africa. A common problem comes from overloaded trucks, with goods often piled high and people even sitting on top. This overloading causes additional road wear and puts both passengers and other road users at considerable risk.

The Union Commission of West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) says that tackling truck overloading and also harmonising road maintenance procedures could help cut crashes on West African roads.

Road safety is a key concern in West Africa. The rate of deaths and serious injuries is unacceptable, which is why UEOMA is keen for new measures to be introduced to address the issue.

 

Related Content

  • Improving road safety worldwide
    June 27, 2019
    The UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) says that road safety requires a major transformation to halve road fatalities by 2020. Data shows that road injuries present a significant public health concern worldwide. Road crashes are one of the top 10 causes of death globally. But despite roads in the EU becoming safer each year, the reduction of road fatalities since 2010 has reached a plateau. In 2018, there were 25,100 reported road fatalities across the 28 EU member states. The average road fatality
  • Implementing road safety initiatives
    July 13, 2012
    Blair Turner examines infrastructure options for achieving Safe System outcomes and their implementation in Australia Like a number of other developed countries around the world, Australia has recently adopted a 'Safe System' approach to addressing road safety. This approach, which stems from Sweden's Vision Zero and Sustainable Safety in the Netherlands, recognises that humans as road users are fallible and will make mistakes. There are also limits to the kinetic energy exchange that humans can tolerate (
  • Helmet wearing a key priority in road safety
    February 27, 2012
    Politicians can be an easy target for criticism. Their job involves making decisions that affect the lives of others, whether popular or unpopular, which they believe are nevertheless for the common good. But every once in a while politicians; international, national or local, do something so unutterably stupid it defies explanation. And in the US state of Michigan, the Senate has done just that by approving the repeal of the motorcycle helmet law.
  • Europe’s road safety improved for 2019
    June 22, 2020
    New data shows that Europe’s road safety improved in 2019.