Five people died and four others were critically injured on Monday night, February 22, following a grisly accident at Nithi blackspot in Tharaka Nithi County after a Public Service Vehicle (PSV) and a truck collided.
The truck, which was ferrying milk, was travelling from Meru County while the PSV was from Chuka on its way to Chogoria.
"I was contacted and told that one of my vehicles had been involved in an accident. When I got to the scene, I was told that there were five passengers and a driver who all died on the spot," the owner of the PSV told reporters.
He suspected that the brakes for the truck could have failed which resulted in the Monday night accident.
The accident came a week after nine individuals died following an accident that took place near St Mary's hospital near Gilgil along the Nairobi Nakuru Highway at Soysambu area.
"The matatu has been reduced to a shell and bodies are lying all over," a witness told reporters.
On December 13, 2020, the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) statistics disclosed that fatalities had increased compared to the same period of time in 2019 where 107 perished in road accidents.
Data by the police and the NTSA indicated that road accidents between January and December 2020 stood at 3,663 compared to 3,508, during the same time in 2019.
An annual increase of 9.4 percent in deaths was recorded. Between January and December 13, 2020, 3,663 people died on the road compared to 3,348 last year, which is a difference in 215 fatalities.
The analysis indicated that most accidents are attributed to human-related factors such as speeding, reckless driving, dangerous overtaking, drunk driving, failure to use helmets among others.
