On the road from Kakamega to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, traffic grinds to a halt.
Police officers man roadblocks, as paramedics rush in to unpick the injured from two wrecked vehicles.
‘As we watched in horror,’ says Kenyan Science Journalist Pius Sawa Murefu, ‘a heavily loaded lorry slammed into the back of the growing line of vehicles, causing yet more carnage.’
Africa has the highest road crash death rate in the world. Over 800 people are killed on the continent’s roads every day. Around 20% of the world’s 1.3 million annual road crash deaths occur in Africa, which holds just 3% of the world’s cars.
‘Everyone on the roadside was talking about the “bad accident”,’ says Murefu, ‘but fresh from a workshop on reporting on road safety, I stopped myself from using the word accident, because it suggests something inevitable, something we can’t ever stop or control.’
Marefu was one of 17 journalists selected from over 650 applicants to attend a recent WHO and Science Africa hosted Road Safety Reporting Workshop for African Journalists and Media Trainers in Nairobi. The aim was to help journalists report on road safety and prepare them to train more journalists to cover this urgent and under-reported crisis.
Think bigger
‘We’ve become numb to the shocking scale of the carnage on our roads,’ said Dr Nhan Tran, Head of Safety and Mobility at WHO, in an opening address to the three day event, ‘and we’ve become numb to the unacceptable risks that we all face on the roads every day.’
‘It’s as if there is a tacit – and wrong – understanding that having thousands of people die is just part of the deal for getting around by road. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Evidence shows these tragedies are preventable, if leaders take the right decisions.’
Dr Tran called for a shift from a ‘traditional’ approach to road safety that solely focuses on crashes, individuals or specific actions, to a big picture approach that looks at mobility systems as a whole.
‘If we understand how all elements in the system interconnect and affect each other, our responses will be better and we will save many more lives.’
Marefu agrees. ‘Journalists must go beyond blaming pedestrians or drivers and look at the big picture. This includes road designers, traffic engineers, urban planners and the police.’
Dig deeper
‘My big takeaway,’ notes Henry Sekanjako, a senior multimedia journalist with New Vision news in Uganda, ‘is that as journalists, we must always go beyond police reports, and investigate how these deaths impact on our economies, incomes and so much more.’
WHO estimates that most countries lose around 3% of GDP from crashes. The cost of treatment for victims, the productivity that is lost from those killed or disabled, and from family members that are forced to become caregivers, eats deep into the economy.
‘The story always stops at “six dead,” but that’s where the story actually starts,’ says Dr Benjamin Wachira, Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Aga Khan University in Nairobi. ‘The long-term impact on people, families, communities and countries, that’s the story that never gets told.’
Dr Wachira led a session on emergency responses to crashes, where for victims, just minutes can mean the difference between life and death.
WHO urges countries to have a single, toll-free telephone number for emergencies that is easy to remember, and that is linked to a dispatch centre to quickly deploy fully equipped ambulances with well-trained personnel.
‘I came to learn that many lives are lost due to delayed medical responses’ notes Sekanjako. ‘It was hard to hear that some victims wait for hours for professional help, and that well-intentioned bystanders can make it worse if they are not trained. If African governments invested more, many more lives would be saved.’
Sessions covered the challenges of reporting on crashes, fatalities and injuries, and where to find quality data, including the Global Status Report on Road Safety and the WHO Global Health Estimates, as well as how to bring data to life with compelling storytelling.
‘As an editor, I am in constant need of reliable data,’ says Yodit Admasu Tefera, Editor in Chief at Ethiopia’s AfriHealth TV. ‘The resources that were shared will help enrich our stories.’
Christine Ogut, Deputy Director of Safety Audits and Inspections at Kenya’s National Transport and Safety Authority, led a field trip to the bustling Yaya Junction in Central Nairobi, to let journalists see the hazards and improvements up close.
‘We’re working to design roads that help mitigate the mistakes that all humans make,’ Ogut explained. ‘Roads that encourage safer behaviours and meet the needs of all road users.’
Deadly crashes at the Yaya junction dropped from four to one per year between 2017 and 2022 due to improvements to infrastructure and other advances, but big risks remain, particularly for vulnerable road users like motorcycle riders and pedestrians.
Holding leaders to account
David Kiarie, Founder of Kenya’s Road Safety Association, shared his story of losing his sister and severely damaging his leg in a crash as a young man, and how he dedicated his life to boldly campaigning for road safety.
‘I have been fighting for years,’ he says. ‘My bank accounts were closed. My company was closed. I really don’t know where this kind of power comes from.’
Kiarie challenged journalists to dig deeper into more areas where few have gone before, such as around corruption and the insurance industry.
Kevin Mubadi, Founder of Kenya’s Boda Boda [motorcycle taxi] Safety Association, fielded questions from journalists in a mock radio call-in show on motorcycle safety.
Sessions were also held on the gendered aspects of road safety and the links between traffic and air pollution with an expert from the United Nations Environment Programme.
Up to ten grants are being made available to participants for reporting on road safety or for training journalists in their home countries.
“I walked away from this training as a road safety ambassador,’ says Henry Sekanjako. ‘I will not only report on road safety, but will ensure that there is sanity on our roads by holding the government and other road users to account.’
Sharing solutions
The Solutions Journalism approach to news reporting flips the narrative in news stories from the traditional focus on problems, such as crashes, to responses.
Good solutions stories can provide insights that help tackle complex problems. Yet they also acknowledge the limitations of responses, are grounded in facts and evidence, and avoid hype and advocacy.
With an eye on sharing what works between countries, the solutions approach underpinned much of the workshop, and in support of the wider Road Safety Reporting initiative, which will see similar workshops for Asian and Latin American journalists take place in the coming months, WHO and the Solutions Journalism Network are collecting exemplary solutions-focused stories on road safety.
‘The language used in reporting is key to helping shape public perceptions of who is to blame for crashes, and far too often that blame falls on victims. But if we choose our words carefully, undertake good research and focus on solutions, we can share stories that help bring positive change,’ says WHO’s Nhan Tran.
‘Journalists have a crucial role to play in holding leaders to account, and making sure they get on with making transport safe for everyone, especially the most vulnerable.’