Lilian Kaivilu, GPJ Kenya
Francisco Oduor, in the matatu that he drives, lines up to accept passengers. Oduor is among the public service vehicle drivers who have received first aid and road safety training.
NAIROBI, KENYA — Along Jogoo Road, one of the motorways leading to the city center of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, motorists scramble for space. Some drive over curbs, trying to beat the standstill traffic in the early morning rush hour. Others toot their horns impatiently. Music blasts from public service vehicles ─ minibuses and vans locally known as matatus ─ as they take over walkways, looking for alternative routes to enter the city.
Public service vehicle drivers make as many trips as possible during the morning hours to earn the money they need, and this involves breaking traffic rules: speeding, overlapping, jumping red lights and picking up passengers in undesignated places.
Consequently, accidents occur frequently. About 3,000 people die in road accidents in Kenya every year, according to the National Transport and Safety Authority Road Safety Status Report 2015. (See our previous coverage here.)
To change that, local transport advocates hope their grassroots efforts to train drivers will help them follow road laws, prevent road accidents and even be effective first responders when accidents do occur. A group of those advocates developed a program called Msamaria Mwema, which in Swahili means Good Samaritan, to train 500 drivers who will then pass on their skills to others.
The Matatu Owners Association, a group made up of public service vehicle owners, launched the program in June in partnership with the Automobile Association of Kenya, an organization that promotes the welfare of motorists, and St John Ambulance. Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, a global motorists’ welfare group, is funding the program.
Drivers are trained in defensive driving and first aid and are encouraged to follow traffic rules and respect others. Each driver receives eight hours of group training.
Anne Kabuchi, the customer service and public relations manager at the Automobile Association of Kenya, says many public transport drivers have never had formal training. They acquired their licenses illegally, she says.
“What this means is that such drivers do not know the basic highway codes and traffic signs. This is why they easily cause accidents,” she says.
Even if those drivers aren’t involved in an accident, she says, they’re on the road so much that they’ll likely be among the first to be able to respond when one occurs.
“So we believe that if the driver has the basic first aid skills, then many lives will be saved,” she says.
Ninety percent of traffic deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, according to the World Health Organization’s 2015 Global Status Report on Road Safety. That’s where the World Bank says 85 percent of the world’s population lives. The problem is so severe that member states of the United Nations agreed to try to halve the number of road deaths and injuries by 2020. That benchmark was added as a target in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, a list of 17 measurable targets intended to improve life around the world.
Francisco Oduor, a public service vehicle driver in Nairobi, says the Msamaria Mwema training has encouraged him to take his work seriously.
“We were taught how to be courteous on the road as drivers,” he says. “Although this may seem like common sense, not many [public service vehicle] drivers treat other road users right. But now, I know why it is important.”
He says most road accidents occur because drivers have a bad attitude and employers set high revenue targets.
“This makes the drivers to over-speed, just to achieve their daily targets,” says Oduor, who has been on the job for 16 years.
John Gichigi, a trainer in the program and the executive officer in charge of Matatu Owners Association’s Nairobi branch, says the program could help restore people’s trust in public transport drivers.
“For a long time, public service vehicle drivers have been perceived as arrogant by the public. This has, in turn, made them rough on the passengers and other road users,” Gichigi says. “We are already noticing a change of attitude in drivers who have so far gone through the training, and we hope that more drivers will be reached by it.”
Kabuchi says the program will focus mainly on Nairobi, as drivers based in the city are likely to travel up-country.
Fred Majiwa, the head of communication at St John Ambulance, hopes traffic fatalities will decrease once drivers complete the training.
“I am confident that there will be a lot of interest once the current trainees go back on the road. We hope that they will be road safety ambassadors out there,” Majiwa says.
Lilian Kaivilu, GPJ, translated some interviews from Kiswahili.
