THE Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, on Thursday, September 28, said it had in the last three months referred 2,143 drivers to specialist hospitals to ascertain their mental health status.

It said the motorists were among 2,360 arrested for various traffic offences in Abuja as part of its Operation Cobra, an initiative for the arrest and prosecution of motorists found to have violated traffic rules towards restoring sanity to the nation’s highways.

Boboye Oyeyemi, the corps marshal, FRSC, gave the figures in Lagos on Thursday, September 28, at a press briefing to mark the beginning of the 10th ‘Don’t Drink and Drive Campaign’ co-sponsored by the Nigerian Brewery Plc to improve road safety nationwide.

Speaking through Bisi Kazeem, the corps’ public education officer, Oyeyemi also disclosed that between February 1, 2017 and September 20, 2017, only 66,774 vehicles were found to have speed-limiting devices out of 165,040 commercial vehicles stopped by the FRSC patrol teams for routine checks, translating to 40.5 per cent compliance.

Further on the mental test, Oyeyemi said that the result of the psychological evaluation enabled the FRSC “to take appropriate action in line with extant law.”

He said traffic offenders were stopped and “issued referral notes to visit designated hospitals for psychological evaluation to ascertain their mental health status.”

“As an intelligence-driven government agency, corps’ findings at the early part of the year identified some road vices such as traffic light violation, route violation, use of phone while driving and reckless driving as the most prevalent among other causative factors of road crashes,” Oyeyemi added.

Besides, the corps marshal said since October 1, 2016 when the corps received the presidential directive to start a nationwide advisory enforcement of the speed- limiting device installation, non-compliant drivers were not issued fine tickets but only “advised to install this device.”

Kufre Ekanem, corporate affairs manager of the Nigerian Breweries, said the DDD campaign involved enlightenment rallies for drivers in various cities, media messages with free medical checks and eye test for motorists.

– Sept. 29, 2017 @ 12:52 GMT |