Just last week, I witnessed a commercial Mazda bus’ left rear tyre pull off from the wheel hub assembly; fortunately, the vehicle wasn’t moving too quickly at approximately 50-60km/hr and the bus headed towards the right end of the bridge till it came to a halt owing to the tremendous frictional force between the brake drum (of the affected wheel) and the road surface. If the driver was driving the bus any faster or swerved in a frightened manner, I can assure you that we would have heard news about a fatal accident along Lagos-Ibadan expressway involving more than 18 persons with almost no one surviving. This is one out of so many incidences of avoidable accidents causing death in numbers. The point am trying to make here is that lives have been lost because of the carelessness and reluctance of vehicle owners to spend on their cars and carry out the basic required maintenance. The bus incident here was simply caused by very loose bearings connected to the main drive-shafts off this rear-wheeled drive vehicle; apparently due to negligence on the part of the commercial bus driver and/or owner.

Scenarios of this kind prompted me to finally write about this and what government can do to curb this menace. I have always been an advocate of Nigerian and Africans as a whole upholding a proper vehicle maintenance culture; in the light of the reality before us I feel the only way out here is government taking a firm stand by creating new laws which will unequivocally ‘force’ the larger chunk of the Nigerian motoring populace to start imbibing proper vehicle maintenance culture if they deem it important to own a car.

So what kind of laws am I suggesting? The answer to this question is criminalizing certain poor vehicle maintenance attitudes, especially the ones that are most likely to lead to fatal accidents. These laws should be enforced by the police. Defaulting vehicle owners should be jailed or heavily fined and in some cases, the option of auctioning these vehicles should be welcome. Nigerians over time have shown that they need a heavy hand and I think the government should do just that. Since MOT centres and V.I.O (vehicle inspection office) are not as effective as anticipated, I feel this is the only way out.

The economic benefits of this move will be enormous and basically we will have fewer scraped vehicles plying Nigerian roads. Some of the areas worth considering are:

1)Bearings/wheel hubs assembly

2)Tie-rods(steering arms)

3)Ball joints

4)Brake pads

It’s high time government took a stand to reduce the spate of road accidents. The downside of laws like these is the inevitable abuse by unscrupulous police officers who might see this as another means of ripping motorist off. But on the brighter side, it will make motorist more aware of their responsibilities as vehicle owners.

http://autobaseafrica.com/criminalizing-poor-vehicle-maintenance-attitude/

Immune#1:
The point am trying to make here is that lives have been lost because of the carelessness and reluctance of vehicle owners to spend on their cars and carry out the basic required maintenance. The bus incident here was simply caused by very loose bearings connected to the main drive-shafts off this rear-wheeled drive vehicle; apparently due to negligence on the part of the commercial bus driver and/or owner.

So what kind of laws am I suggesting? The answer to this question is criminalizing certain poor vehicle maintenance attitudes, especially the ones that are most likely to lead to fatal accidents. These laws should be enforced by the police. Defaulting vehicle owners should be jailed or heavily fined and in some cases, the option of auctioning these vehicles should be welcome. Nigerians over time have shown that they need a heavy hand and I think the government should do just that. Since MOT centres and V.I.O (vehicle inspection office) are not as effective as anticipated, I feel this is the only way out.

My dear fellow, I couldn't disagree with you more. What exactly is your definition of a "heavy hand": more draconian legislation à la the Lagos Road Traffic Act that could in theory send you to jail for a mere traffic offence on the word of a corrupt LASTMA man? Enforcement by the well-regarded and highly effective Nigeria Police Force is really what you have in mind? Really?

Let me point out that I'm not in favour of allowing negligence to go unpunished. However, remember that the law is all about trying to be fair and 1) How do you prove that an accident that has occurred was due to poor maintenance and therefore negligence on the owner's part? Nigeria has absolutely no forensics labs to speak of. 2) The government should also bear some blame here; at this stage of our development we should have safer mass transit systems like rail available (at least in the major cities and on major routes like Lagos - Ibadan) and shouldn't be relying on gypsy operators to move human beings and there should by now be no place for the Mazda operator figuring in your piece, so the government should not be taking out its failures on citizens trying to cope therewith; 3) From a human rights and legal standpoint, increasing the number of crimes in the statute book is not a good thing, because even in countries with relatively good enforcement systems, there is always a scope for human error. Take the UK's ill-thought out 2006 Fraud Act for example, which has basically made lying a crime. Yes, lying.

Finally, I agree that draconian legislation has worked in some instances, like in Singapore when littering was made a serious offence carrying heavy fines, and people shaped up. But not in Nigeria. Our enforcement apparatus is weak to non-existent.

A suggestion:far better for the government to allow only licensed fleet operators to transport people (e.g. Edo Line, ABC, Good is Good Motors, etc, etc, you know the kind of companies I mean). The same must needs apply to inter-city transport: bus companies should be set up and (in Lagos, for example)the ubiquitous danfos and their mad drivers should be sent on early retirement. These sorts of entities can be held more strictly to account if there is an accident with any of their vehicles that can possibly be proven to be due to criminal negligence. Gypsy operators and their one man vehicles will be banned. This might definitely create hardship for some of them, which is to be regretted, but you can't have an omelette without breaking eggs.