Vehicle Type-Approval & Road Worthiness Test in Togo
Date
20 Jul 2018
Sections
Transport
With only 2% of the world’s vehicles but 16% of road fatalities, Africa has been hit particularly hard by the global road safety crisis. With this highest per capita rate of road fatalities in the world, road deaths in sub-Saharan Africa are projected to more than double from some 243,000 deaths projected for 2015 to 514,000 by 2030.
Considering that one of the pillars of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 is devoted in particular to “vehicle safety”, the World Bank’s GRSF and CITA have agreed to work together to formalize and improve vehicle compliance and monitoring procedures. This collaboration aims to strengthening national capacities in low- and middle-income countries to improve road safety, as well as intensify coordination of funding and activities to be promoted.
To do so, they have committed to developing projects called AVIS – Assessment of Vehicle Inspection Systems.
The overall objective of the AVIS projects is to carry out audits of vehicle inspection systems in different countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and Togo has been selected as the first country where this audit is carried out. The study done in Togo is therefore the pilot of the AVIS program, and the objective is to use the methodology developed for Togo to the other countries included in the AVIS program.
This project includes a two-week mission in the field to collect the information required to perform the assessment. The information was collected during meetings with the various stakeholders, public and private entities, that are involved in the management of the road infrastructure, vehicle importation & fleet management, and traffic safety.
From the analysis of the current situation in Togo regarding the vehicle inspection, the final report led to provide a set of recommendations developed to improve the reliability of road transportation and traffic safety. These recommendations are organized in three categories:
- Requirements for the vehicles entering the country. Vehicles should be registered once it has been confirmed that they meet the specific technical requirement, in terms of traffic safety and protection of the environment;
- Capacity building for the DTRF (Direction des Transports Routiers et Ferroviaires) to manage the periodic technical inspections. It is proposed to build a framework that will allow the administration to better structure and oversee the vehicle reception and inspection activities, along with a training of the staff;
- Upgrade of the existing inspection stations, including the size of the network, for example building up new inspection lines.
The entire report was published last 19th July and it can be found on our website, as well as in the GRSF webpage.