From October 1, 2016, the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) will commence implementation and enforcement of the Speed Limiting Device in the country. The FRSC said it already has the approval of the presidency.
While briefing stakeholders in Abuja, FRSC’s Corps Marshall, Boboye Oyeyemi, said the implementation and enforcement of the device witnessed four postponements from its initial launching date of June 1, 2015, before its final approval by the presidency.
He said, “The final directive from the presidency is clear; the enforcement date for the implementation of the speed limiting device is on October 1 and we have had series of stakeholders meeting.”
Speaking further, Mr Oyeyemi said, “The essence of today’s meeting is to finally convey the directive of the federal government to the stakeholders that with effect from October 1, the implementation and enforcement would commence.
“We already have the portal that we will use to monitor this, we don’t need to pursue any vehicle, we will just stop you like we verify licence.
“On the tablet we will check whether your vehicle has been installed with the device, if it has not, we will impound the vehicle and we make sure that you do the right thing.
“We are not talking about fines now, it’s to save lives so we will impound the vehicle then the owner of the vehicle will be made to install the device before the journey continues.”
The FRSC boss pointed out that the agency was only concerned about commercial vehicles installing the device for now, adding that with time, the enforcement would extend to private vehicles so as to cut down crashes on the road.
He opined that speed is the major cause of road crashes in the country.
“For car occupants in a crash with an impact speed of 80km/h, the likelihood of death is 20 times what it would have been at an impact speed of 30km/h.
“Speed is the major cause of crashes in Nigeria with commercial vehicles accounting for 65 per cent of the crashes, he said.
