Telecommunications expert shares how mobile phones can help reduce road accidents

Mobile phone, if properly used, can prevent vehicular accident in the country, a telecommunication expert, has said.

He says some institutions are already benefiting from the technology in the country.

Head of Network at Vodafone, Ebenezer Siebu, made the revelation in an interview with Onua News Thursday, April 6, 2023, when the world marked the 50th anniversary of mobile telephone communications.

Mr. Siebu, explaining the impact of mobile phones on lives and businesses to Onua News said most of the accidents that occur on Ghana’s major roads are due to overspeeding which can be minimised with a mobile phone

“We don’t preach on what we don’t live by so we are even leveraging on these solutions internally,” he explained.

He said they are using this system to track their cars internally across the country which has reduced accidents involving their vehicles.

“We have fixed these tracking systems in all our vehicles to monitor speeding in real times which prompts us whether a driver is speeding. Not only for speeding, that is one aspect. Another aspect is journey management. For example, one driver can drive from here [Accra] to Tamale for long hours. But if the company policy says a driver must park and rest in every three hours’ drive in a journey, our tracking systems can monitor all these,” Mr. Siebu revealed.

He explained that road safety experts say overspeeding is a major cause of accidents in the country but can be solved psychologically by prompting drivers to limit their speed.

Asked whether such facilities have been made available to stakeholders in road safety, Mr. Siebu said already, they are in collaborations with some stakeholders on the use of mobile phones in reducing accidents.

“The good thing is that we are already in touch with the major stakeholders and they also appreciate the value of these solutions and some of these enterprises and some of the public agencies have implemented these tracking solutions in their vehicles,” he added.

Mr. Siebu said added that: “What we are going to see in the future is increase adoption of some of these things to save lives and also benefit the economy.”