Buses called “timetables”, conveying passengers and goods, many of which circulate at night from region to region, are one of the main means of transport in Senegal and cause many accidents.
The Senegalese government announced on Tuesday new measures to combat road safety, including a ban on night bus travel and the import of used tires, after an accident that killed at least 39 people on Sunday.
Public passenger transport vehicles will be banned from “travelling on interurban roads between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.”, Prime Minister Amadou Bâ announced after a government meeting in the new town of Diamniadio, near Dakar.
Other measures prohibiting the import of second-hand tires and making “compulsory the sealing of speedometers of vehicles transporting people and goods at 90 km/h” were also announced at Tuesday’s meeting.
700 deaths each year
These measures “should not be subject to postponement or compromise. We will be uncompromising with those who contravene the rules enacted to guarantee the physical integrity of our fellow citizens”, declared the Prime Minister.
Road accidents officially kill 700 people each year in Senegal, a West African country of more than 17 million inhabitants.
The new measures are announced after the collision between two buses which left 39 dead and 101 injured on Sunday in the village of Sikilo, in the Kaffrine region (center), some 250 kilometers from Dakar.
President Macky Sall, who went to the scene of the accident the same day, declared three days of national mourning from Monday.
