The curfew introduced to limit Covid-19 infections has hiked the number of road accidents, according to a road security report by the Traffic and Road Safety department of the Rwanda National Police (RNP). Curfew was imposed by the government in early May when the six-week countrywide lockdown was lifted. At the time, every person had to be in their home by 8pm. The curfew time was later revised to 9pm after a few weeks. On August 26, the cabinet revised several measures to contain the sudden surge of Covid-19 infections and one of those was putting curfew time at 7pm. Since then, traffic jams have become longer partly because some people have failed to plan accordingly, something that has led to several road accidents with many rushing to beat curfew. This, the Police reports, has led to an increase in road accidents because some people and motorists in particular, are always late and they try to rush to be home in time. According to the traffic security report, 1,826 road accidents happened between March and August this year. Up to 744 of them occurred during the last hour to curfew time. This means that 40.7 percent of the accidents are taking place in just one hour against 59.3 that happens in 16 hours, RNP said. “We see reckless drivers when it’s coming towards 7pm, and as the numbers show, this has increased accidents,” Commissioner of Police John Bosco Kabera said. He added that “Bad choices by individuals and reckless use of the road trying to beat time is the cause of the accidents.” Officials have explained that check-in time seeks to limit human interactions which can promote the spread of the virus and increase uncontrolled infections. In most cases, Kabera blamed that “people who are not home by 7pm are those who are from visiting friends or families and forget about the time, or those who attend prohibited gatherings.” According to the government guidelines, social gatherings remain prohibited, as well as any unauthorized movement past 7pm. Persons who are caught violating the curfew regulation are taken to designated centers where they spend the night being educated on Covid-19 prevention practices, in addition to a fine of Rwf10,000. To date, Rwanda has confirmed over 4,400 Covid-19 infections of which about 2,300 are recovered cases. A total of 20 victims have been reported to succumb to respiratory disease. Since the outbreak in March, the country has carried out 447,603 tests.
