Combatting Road Accidents and Fatalities

Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) experienced an increase in the use of motor vehicles from the late 1920s. Consequently, there was a rapid increase in the occurrence of road accidents from the 1940s onwards. The rise in cases of accidents attracted attention of the colonial state and other stakeholders that embarked on measures to improve road safety. Using a corpus of archival sources, this article examines the measures that the colonial state and voluntary organisations undertook to improve road safety in Northern Rhodesia from the 1940s to 1964. It contributes to scholarly works on the use of motor vehicles in Africa and how colonial societies understood and managed road safety. It demonstrates that in response to the rise in motor vehicle usage and road accidents, the colonial state in Northern Rhodesia enhanced the legislative framework and established a road safety enforcement machinery. Besides, voluntary associations were also formed, which held road safety education campaigns for children and adults. However, these measures were not very successful and, overall, road accidents and fatalities continued to rise with the increasing use of motor vehicles that overwhelmed the poorly funded and inadequately staffed road safety bodies.