The National Road Safety task force was on the major highways this weekend to ensure an accident-free start of the second term of the school year which comes after a festive Christmas holiday.

On Saturday 3rd January 2015, the control team was on the Pouma - Edea highway in continuation of the second generation control – surveillance – repression road safety campaign.

The main road offences sanctioned by the officers included over speeding, lack of First Aid boxes for public transport vehicles, CEMAC number plates, non-use of seat belts, lack of driving and vehicles documents such as the driving licences, the windscreen licence, insurance and roadworthiness attestations, among others.

The Head of Road safety operations, Alpha detachment in Pouma - Edea, Colonel René Kountchou, said strict measures were being implemented to ensure that school children and their families go back to school safely. “We hope to reduce road accidents to the barest minimum” he noted.

The determination of the officers could not be dampened by the pleas, shouts and sometimes influence peddling of some road users sanctioned for either of the road offences.

At the village of Kakanzock, some three kilometres from Edea where a fixed gendarmerie check point was set up, Christophe Teagun driving a car with a cracked windscreen, was amongst the many commuters who paid a fine of FCFA 25,000 for over speeding and for not putting on seatbelt.

In one of the public transport buses plying the Yaounde – Douala highway, the First Aid box of a 57-seater bus was forced open by the control team only to find fake objects in the place of drugs. The driver had to pay FCFA 7,000 instead of FCFA 3,600 as the bus was supposed to have two First Aid boxes.

At another gendarmerie checkpoint in Dibamba, officers were rigorous with all road users. Some drivers, who had earlier paid penalties at the Kakanzock check point, fell again for the same infractions in Dibamaba only a few kilometres away due to non respect of road signs.

Chief Warrant Officer, Evelyne Andeme regretted that drivers still continued driving without seatbelts, over speeding and were over loading.

She explained that even though the speed limit in that zone was 90 km/h, some drivers drove at speeds as high as 154 km/h. Besides drivers and the state of the vehicles, the gendarmeries also checked passengers with metal detectors to prevent the circulation of weapons.

Despite the strike Gendarmerie presence, four people still lost their lives in a ghastly accident Saturday night when an Avensis car attempted to overtake a chain of vehicles and crashed fatally in to an approaching bus. The accident occurred at the area called “etats-unis” in the village of Nkenlikok some 40km from Yaounde.