Ghana recorded 2,151 road crash deaths last year. President John Dramani Mahama wants that number to fall — and he is set up a monthly scorecard to find out if it will.
Speaking at a meet-the-press session at Jubilee House on Thursday, November 5, President Mahama said the government will compare road accident data month-by-month against 2025 figures to determine whether the newly launched TraffiTech automated traffic enforcement system is actually cutting fatalities on Ghana's roads.
TraffiTech went live on November 1, 2026, replacing manual speed checks conducted by police officers with an automated system that detects speeding and generates evidence of offences. Mahama confirmed that the speeding detection module is the only component of TraffiTech currently operational.
A Month-by-Month Test
The President framed the monthly reviews as a transparency mechanism — a way for the public to judge the system on results rather than promises.
"I can assure you, if we bear with this TraffiTech system, when you see the results of reduction in accidents at the end of the year, because it started November 1st, we will do a month-to-month comparison with last year. And you yourself will be surprised at the number of lives this TraffiTech system will save." — President John Dramani Mahama
Accident figures logged from November 1, 2026 onwards will be stacked against data from the same months in 2025 to establish whether the technology is making a measurable difference. It is a straightforward benchmark — and one that leaves little room for ambiguity.
Children Among the Hardest Hit
Of the 2,151 people who died on Ghana's roads last year, 474 were pedestrians struck by vehicles. Schoolchildren returning home accounted for a significant share of those deaths — a detail Mahama highlighted to underscore why speed compliance in urban areas is not optional.
Excessive speed, he explained, reduces a driver's reaction time when pedestrians cross unexpectedly, making fatal outcomes far more likely. That argument sits at the heart of TraffiTech's design logic: automate detection, remove human inconsistency from enforcement, and make speeding genuinely risky for drivers.
50 km/h in Urban Areas — No Exceptions
Mahama used the session to remind motorists of a limit that is often ignored in practice: 50 kilometres per hour in all urban centres, including Accra. He was direct about it.
"The general speed limit in any urban centre, including Accra, is 50. And so you are not supposed to go above 50." — President John Dramani Mahama
The appeal came alongside a broader call for motorists to cooperate with the new automated system as the country shifts away from police-led manual enforcement, which has historically been inconsistent across different stretches of road.
Tech Doing the Job Humans Could not Consistently
TraffiTech's core pitch is automation. Where a police officer might miss a speeding vehicle or be absent entirely, an automated detector does not. It logs the offence, captures evidence, and removes the discretion — and potential corruption — from the equation. This kind of technology-driven enforcement is part of a growing global push to reduce road fatalities through smarter infrastructure rather than heavier policing alone.
Ghana's road safety record has long been a concern. The country consistently ranks among sub-Saharan Africa's higher-risk nations for road fatalities relative to its vehicle population. Mahama's government is betting that TraffiTech changes that trajectory — and the monthly data reviews will make it very clear, very quickly, whether that bet is paying off.
The first meaningful comparison point will come when November 2026 accident figures are set against November 2025. That data, once published, will be the first real test of whether TraffiTech delivers on its promise.