Ghana is facing a troubling road safety paradox. While reported crash numbers have declined in some periods, fatalities continue to rise, pointing to a shift toward deadlier collisions nationwide.
The trend exposes deep systemic weaknesses in speed control, regulatory enforcement, urban planning, and post-crash emergency response.
These gaps have triggered renewed calls for urgent reforms to protect vulnerable road users and reduce crash severity.
Data from the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) show that between January and October 2025, reported road traffic crashes increased from 11,127 to 11,935, a rise of 7.3 per cent. The number of vehicles involved grew by 8.0 per cent, from 18,879 to 20,397.
Over the same period, fatalities surged by 19.2 percent, climbing from 2,038 to 2,429. Injuries rose by 6.5 per cent to 13,764, while pedestrian knockdowns increased by 3.9 per cent to 2,062.
The figures suggest that crashes are becoming more severe, not merely more frequent. The widening gap between crashes and deaths reflects excessive speed, rising motorcycle involvement, mixed traffic conditions, and weaknesses in emergency response.
“Our biggest enemy is speeding,” Mr David Osafo Adonteng, a former Director-General of the NRSA, had said. “Speed, or what we call over-speeding, has become the lone ranger, killing people, maiming them, and destroying property. All attempts globally to arrest this enemy have yielded little or no results.”
The severity trend was stark in October 2025. Compared to October 2024, reported crashes declined by 8.1 per cent. The number of vehicles involved fell by 5.8 per cent, injuries dropped by 7.3 per cent, and pedestrian knockdowns decreased by 14.0 per cent.
Yet deaths rose from 221 to 249, an increase of 12.7 per cent.
Mr Dennis Yeribu, Principal Planning Manager at the NRSA, said Ghana had moved beyond policy declarations to practical interventions.
“Engineers are deploying speed humps, rumble strips, and other traffic-calming devices. The NRSA is using education to speak to the conscience of drivers, while the police are on the roads with gadgets to check speed limits,” he said.
“Our speed limit regime is clear, 100 kilometres per hour on the Accra-Tema motorway, 90 kilometres per hour on highways, and 50 kilometres per hour in settlements, but compliance is rare.”
“This is the most worrying signal in the data,” Mr Yeribu added. “When fewer crashes still result in more deaths, it means survivability is low. Speed and vulnerability are the drivers.”
Nowhere are these risks more visible than in Accra, where chronic congestion has turned daily travel into a test of endurance.
From Madina through Circle, buses, minibuses, trucks, private saloon cars, motorcycles, tricycles, bicycles, and pedestrians all compete for the same limited road space.
Dedicated lanes for bicycles or urban buses are largely absent. Weak shoulders, potholes, and roadside trading further narrow carriageways. Police checkpoints, though intended to improve compliance, often worsen gridlock.
Urban planners say the result is unpredictable traffic flow, risky overtaking, and frequent conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians.
For Mr Kwamina Fobi, a 73-year-old painter who commutes to Circle, today’s congestion contrasts sharply with the past.
“In the 1970s and 1980s, roads were mostly untarred, but traffic was light and crashes were rare,” he said. “Now, it is too many cars and too little planning.”
Vehicle growth has sharply intensified these pressures. As of mid-2025, Ghana had more than 3.47 million registered vehicles, according to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), with about 149,000 new registrations between January and July 2025 alone.
The growth reflects economic stabilisation and rising vehicle ownership. However, registrations are heavily concentrated in Accra and Kumasi, worsening congestion and elevating crash risk in already strained urban corridors.
Vehicle growth has far outpaced infrastructure expansion. Ghana’s automobile market, spanning private cars, commercial vehicles, and motorcycles, has expanded rapidly, eroding the safety gains from road upgrades.
One of the clearest patterns in the October 2025 data is the rise in motorcycle involvement.
While commercial vehicle involvement fell by 4.38 percent and private vehicles by 16.23 percent, motorcycle involvement increased by 11.72 percent, from 529 to 591.
Motorcycles accounted for 27.86 percent of vehicles involved in crashes that month, despite representing a smaller share of the national vehicle fleet.
Safety officials say motorcycles’ vulnerability, combined with high speeds and weak helmet compliance, helps explain why fatalities are rising faster than crashes.
This has sharpened attention on Parliament’s passage of the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill, 2025, which seeks to legalise and regulate commercial motorcycles and tricycles, commonly known as Okada, pending presidential assent.
Advocates, including Mr Enock Jengre, Programmes Officer and Rule of Law Specialist at the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), say the reform offers an opportunity to reduce risk by bringing a large informal transport sector under enforceable rules. He warned, however, that weak implementation could worsen outcomes.
“We welcome the decision to legalise Okada operations, but regulation must come before rapid rollout,” Mr Jengre said.
He said effective regulation should begin with mandatory licensing through the DVLA, clear age limits, structured rider training, and periodic re-testing.
He also called for zoning, restricting commercial motorcycles from high-risk corridors while prioritising communities where they provide essential access.
“Other countries have learned the hard way,” he said. “Zoning allows Okada where it saves lives and keeps it out of places where it increases risk.”
He urged authorities to require visible identifiers or uniforms for commercial riders to distinguish them from private users, simplifying enforcement and accountability.
High speed remains the critical factor that turns survivable crashes into fatal ones.
The failure to curb speeding, especially among motorcyclists, remains a major concern.
Road safety advocates warn that improved roads often trigger reckless driving.
“When roads improve, people test their vehicles as if they are aircraft,” one advocate said. “Vehicles now come with speed ratings above 200 kilometres per hour, and drivers push them beyond limits. The repercussions are devastating.”
NRSA data showing rising fatalities despite fewer crashes have strengthened calls for automated speed enforcement, corridor-specific police operations, and stricter penalties for signal violations.
Mr Jengre also warned that substandard and counterfeit helmets undermine safety gains. He welcomed efforts by the Ghana Standards Authority to finalise and gazette mandatory helmet standards.
“Education without enforcement becomes entertainment,” he said. “Compliance improves only when people expect real penalties.”
Beyond enforcement, experts stress the need for road re-engineering to reflect Ghana’s mixed-traffic reality.
Proposed measures include protected pedestrian crossings near markets and schools, traffic calming in dense urban areas, and pilot motorcycle lanes on selected corridors.
Prof. Williams Ackaah, Principal Research Scientist at the CSIR-Building and Road Research Institute (CSIR-BRRI), has estimated that road crashes cost Ghana about 1.6 percent of GDP annually, roughly 1.2 billion US dollars, through lost productivity, healthcare costs, and vehicle damage.
“These costs divert resources from critical sectors like education and healthcare,” he said. “The loss of breadwinners also destabilises families and communities.”
Another concern is post-crash response. Safety advocates are calling for faster ambulance dispatch, clearer access on major routes, and stronger coordination between police, health services, and hospitals.
In response, the NRSA has launched the Stay Alive Campaign, a national call-to-action urging all Ghanaians to become advocates for safer road use.
The campaign targets increasing road safety awareness to above 90 percent and reducing road traffic crashes, injuries, and deaths by at least 30 percent.
Mr Chemah Joshua Yaadang, Board Chairman of the NRSA, said the Authority was confident the targets were achievable.
“Through continuous education, enforcement, and engineering improvements, supported by meaningful stakeholder engagement, Ghana can significantly reduce road traffic fatalities and create a safer, more efficient transportation system,” he said.
Institutional capacity remains a challenge. During a familiarisation visit to the NRSA in October 2025, the Deputy Minister for Transport, Ms Dorcas Affo-Toffey, was briefed on the Authority’s operations and constraints.
NRSA Director-General Mr Abraham Amaliba called for urgent retooling of the Authority, citing inadequate funding, vehicles, and logistics.
“The deaths on our roads are increasing, and action must be taken to bring the figures down,” he said. “We need more resources to do this, but we are constrained.”
Ms Affo-Toffey assured the Authority of government support and stressed the need to align road safety interventions with the government’s Reset Agenda.
“We all use the roads, and if the roads are not safe, no one is safe,” she said. “We will do our best to keep people safe on our roads.”
For commuters like Mr Fobi, the statistics translate into daily risk and lost time. For policymakers, they represent a test of execution.
Ghana’s road safety challenge is no longer only about reducing crashes, Mr Jengre noted, but about reducing the likelihood that a crash becomes fatal.
As the country awaits presidential assent to the Okada reforms, safety agencies say success will depend on disciplined implementation, inter-agency coordination, and sustained political will.
Without that, analysts warn, Ghana may continue to record fewer crashes, but more funerals.
GNA
Kenneth Odeng Adade
31 Dec 2025
