The yuletide season, like no other period of the year, triggers a surge in commercial and trading activities, hospitality, and travel services.

Entrepreneurs, who have strategically prepared for the yuletide sales fever, reap bountifully.

Travel and tourism service providers are also not left out.

With the holiday season, now in full swing, families and individuals are preparing for festivities and get-togethers.

Some are already set for interstate or oversea travels, to reunite with their loved ones and connect to the holiday cheer.

Unfortunately, as more people are eager to take these exciting road trips, there are increased chances of unlicensed drivers having the opportunity to drive; more people driving under the influence of alcohol as well as people who are excited about the season, prompting an increase in undisciplined and reckless driving.

Without mincing words, the season is also associated with a rise in road accidents.

In the statistics gathered by the Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, a total of nine thousand two hundred and eighteen road traffic crashes occurred in the country last year, out of which three thousand one hundred and thirty four of the total incidents occurred in the last quarter of the year.

Similarly, the road safety agency also reported that thirty thousand, two hundred and forty-two people were injured, while four thousand six hundred and nine people lost their lives during the quarter under review.

The report showed that the carnage on the roads continued during the first quarter of the New Year, as holidaymakers return from the festivities.

The report attributed the major causes of these accidents to speed violation, loss of control, dangerous driving, wrongful overtaking, and tyre blowout. 

It is against this backdrop that Federal Road Safety Corps embarked on sensitization programmes to educate and inform motorists on safe driving during the yuletide.

In the words of the Public Education Officer of the corps, Bisi Kazeem, the agency had deployed thirty-six thousand personnel to control the free flow of traffic during the festive period.

The corps officer advised drivers to make sure that their vehicles are in good working condition before departure. 

It is necessary that drivers should also wear seat belt, pull off the road when tired, obey the rules of the road and to always be with their driver’s license and plan their routes properly to allow enough time to reach their destination.

Rasheedah Makinde