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{
    "id": 510031,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/510031/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 56,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "content": "The last time Kenyans took road safety seriously was in 2002, when the NARC Government won the polls and one of its pledges was to make Kenyan roads safer. The annual death rate at that time was 3000 deaths per year. The then transport Minister, the late. hon. Michuki, proposed tough measures dubbed “Michuki Rules” in his first year in office. Among key requirements of Michuki Rules were the seat belts and reduction of speed on highways and many other areas. For a while, we thought sanity was returning to our country. However, we have failed. This Bill is about children because adults are taken care of by the Traffic Act; but children are not. That is why I decided to bring this Bill to the attention of the House and this country. Children are very vulnerably on our roads; their specific needs were not taken into account when the traffic Act was written and adopted by this Parliament and the Government of Kenya. Children are not small versions of adults. They are smaller, more impulsive, easily distracted, and less able to judge the speed and distance of an approaching traffic. Therefore, it is our duty, as legislators and leaders of this country, to help them so that we may reduce the deaths on our roads. Much as we love universal primary education, we should supplement it with supporting safe access to schools, which is the essence of this Bill. Reducing speed by traffic and creating safe routes for our school children have managed to reduce the number of deaths and injuries. Children understand and react differently to complex traffic situations unlike adults. They bear the biggest portion of traffic injuries and disability in our country. There is a quote from World Health Organization (WHO) that says: “Children have a low attention span, poor judgment and challenges with mobility which predisposes them to road crashes”. It is time we helped our children, especially in areas near schools. Why is speed so dangerous? It has been proven all over the world that slow speed saves lives. This is because in that situation, the driver will have time to break and think. Mistakes are often made when drivers drive very fast, and have no time to react to pedestrians crossing or for any other obstruction on the road. The statistics from WHO indicate that when you drive at 48 Kilometers per hour, 30 per cent of the time pedestrians will die. When you drive at 65 Kilometers per hour, 80 per cent of pedestrians will die. If you drive at 30 Kilometers per hour, 90 per cent of survival is guaranteed. That is why this Bill is important; when we drive near schools or hospitals, we must drive at a speed of 30 Kilometers per hour to save lives. Researchers have also done some research in the New York Department of Transportation, 2014. It says that children under 15 years are biologically incapable of accurately perceiving the speed of an on-coming car, if it is driving faster than 30 Kilometers per hour. This is the fact, and that is why we hear often about children dashing onto on-coming traffic without thinking. This is a direct quote from New York Department of Transportation, which is world renowned for its research. The other aspect of this Bill is safety measures like use of safety belts. Most of our children today in school travel in buses without safety belts unlike in other parts of the world, where safety belts are mandatory for any child. For the rest of the world, it is The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}