The Government of Senegal announced on Tuesday new measures to combat road safety, including a ban on night bus trips and the importation of used tires, after an accident that killed at least 39 people on Sunday.
Public passenger transport vehicles will not be able to “circulate on interurban roads between 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m.,” Prime Minister Amadou Bâ announced after a government meeting in the new city of Diamniadio, near Dakar.
At the meeting on Tuesday, other measures were also announced that prohibit the importation of second-hand tires and make “obligatory the sealing of the speedometers of vehicles that transport people and goods at 90 km/h.”
700 deaths each year
These measures “should not be subject to postponement or compromise. We will be intransigent with those who contravene the rules promulgated to guarantee the physical integrity of our fellow citizens”, declared the Prime Minister.
Traffic accidents officially kill 700 people every year in Senegal, a West African country with more than 17 million people.
The new measures are announced after the collision between two buses that left 39 dead and 101 injured on Sunday in the town of Sikilo, in the Kaffrine region (center), about 250 kilometers from Dakar.
President Macky Sall, who went to the crash site the same day, declared three days of national mourning beginning Monday.
Source: BFM TV
