Against public concern about the possibility of poor quality of flyovers in the capital, Yola, the Adamawa State Government says it chose to bar heavy trucks from flyovers to prevent accidents.
The State Commissioner of Works, Mohammed Suleiman, told inquisitive journalists who raised the issue that heavy trucks were barred from flyovers, not because the flyovers could not endure heavy weight.
The commissioner told the journalists who brought up the matter during a working visit to his office that apart from the restriction of flyovers being a global safety standard, enough accidents around flyovers have been experienced in the state to justify such a safety measure.
The Jimeta axis of the Yola capital metropolis has five flyover bridges, each approach point of which there is a barrier that allows only low-built light-weight vehicles, clearly disallowing trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles.
Countering the allegation and stressing that height barriers are not put up around the flyovers because the decks cannot carry the load, the commissioner of works gave instances of articulated trucks that climbed flyovers fully loaded, broke down at mid-span, and then rolled back into oncoming traffic or sat there on the flyover.
“In many cases, such large vehicles were known to have broken down midway along the deck, with unsuspecting other road users running into them and causing serious injuries and deaths,” the commissioner said.
He disclosed that he had witnessed two fully loaded heavy trucks towed off flyovers by men of the Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, one at the Total flyover, another at Mubi Roundabout flyover.
In yet another instance, the works commissioner recalled the case of a 12-tyre truck climbing the Total flyover from the airport side via PZ Roundabout, reversed, and somersaulted onto the road below.
“The carriageway underneath was empty. It was God that averted a disaster that day,” Suleiman said.
He concluded that trailers do not belong on urban streets and the state is pushing for a trailer park outside town so that heavy vehicles would stop crossing the city.
