Why Trucks Cause Accidents On Nigerian Roads- Driver

A truck driver plying Abuja to Lagos, Abdulrasheed Isma’il, has revealed reasons for most accidents involving truck drivers on Nigeria’s highways.

Isma’il, who hails from Gombe, told THE WHISTLER in an interview that most trailer drivers don’t see their families for upward of two months due to the long-distance travels.

According to him, it is the stress they encounter on the job that makes some drivers take hard drugs to keep fit.

” We can be on the road for two months without seeing our families; our body needs rest but sometimes when the stress becomes too much, we no longer feel it, it becomes part of us.

“We only feel the pressure of the stress when we retire to rest for some time. But once we are on the job we don’t feel it, it’s a daily routine.

“Some of us take hard drugs to wear off the stress, but I don’t. Some take Tramadol, Nescafe, Cocaine and other illegal substances.

“Why I don’t take it because I believe I can do the same work with the same people taking those drugs without any difficulty or difference,’ he explained.

He said some drivers are so used to it that even when they are not at work they still take it, while there are those who take it and it helps them because their immunity is strong.

 “We are always together with them all and see what’s happening to them. Some on the other hand, take it because they see their friends taking it and it ends up posing a problem to them,” he explained.

Isma’il, who spoke in Hausa, recalled his own experience with hard drugs, saying,  “Truth be told, even me, before I started driving, I once took tramadol. I  told myself that let me take it and test how it feels, but when I took it, it dealt with me as I kept throwing up everywhere I went. It made me go out of my senses. I now told myself so this thing is useless like this!

“Since then, I never tried it again since my aim was just to test it. God had saved me from it. Assuming it worked for me, who knows maybe I could have been taking it by now, but it was useless to me.”

The driver explained how taking drugs like Tramadol lead to truck crashes, saying it makes the driver “sleepy.”

Ismail however said he had never had any accident since he started driving a truck on his because he was always careful.

Although he recalled being involved in an accident while still under his master who was the driver.

He said: “Our trailer was loaded with goats and most of them died. About 100 goats died instantly, but those that sustained injuries were slaughtered there and then. We were lucky nothing happened to us, we only managed to sustain a little injury.

“I must be frank, what caused the accident was sleep. My boss who was driving fell asleep. He had just finished complaining of feeling sleepy, but concluded that he would wait until 6am and he would hand over the steering to me.

“But after saying this, it didn’t take him 15 minutes when he fell asleep and the accident occurred. The trailer ran into the streetlights in the middle of the roads.

“As soon as it hit a streetlight, the vehicle fell to one side. This happened in Kontagora, Niger state at that time.”

Isma’il however added that some drivers deliberately cause accidents on the road.

“Why most of us cause accidents sometimes is a deliberate act, while some are caused by overspending. Some drivers are always in a haste trying to reach their destination even when they are not meant to load and drive back that same day.

“So, sometimes I see such behaviour as childish. They have turned it to look as if it’s now the trending thing to do, especially drivers who work with companies since their work is based on trip allowances, the more trips they embark on, the more the income. So, they speed just to go and deliver goods they carry and load the next and make more money.

“I see this as a deliberate act. Although, accidents may occur naturally on their own, and when they happen you cannot avert them, but I also believe that such accidents that come naturally come less harmful because you didn’t cause them deliberately. But if it’s deliberate you will sometimes even look for the driver’s corpse at the scene of the accident and you won’t find it.”