As Christians worldwide marked Easter Day in remembrance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, some families in Uganda were mourning relatives who perished in accidents.
According to the traffic police report released on Monday, at least 37 people perished in fatal accidents during Easter festivities.
“During the period of April, 7 and 10, we registered 76 crashes in which 37 people died and 76 sustained serious injuries, ” the traffic police spokesperson, APS Faridah Nampiima said.
She explained that pedestrians contributed the biggest number of victims with 12 killed and eight injured whereas on the other side, 10 motorcyclists died and 22 sustained serious injuries in these crashes.
The accidents during Easter holiday also saw two passengers in taxis die and four other injured whereas one pedal cyclist died and two were injured.
Causes
According to the traffic police report, over speeding contributed to the highest number of crashes on roads during the Easter period.
A total of 29 crashes were caused by overspeeding and 11 of these were fatal, 14 were serious and four were minor.
On the other side, 14 crashes were caused by careless overtaking in which four of these crashes were fatal and eight serious.
Fatal crashes are those in which people are killed whereas serious accidents are those were only people are injured and minor accidents involve only vehicles damaged.
The accidents
In one of the accidents that happens during the Easter holiday, nine family members perished when a Toyota Alphard they were travelling in collided with a fuel truck in Lwengo.
The accident occurred at around 4pm at Kyoja Trading Centre along the Masaka-Mbarara highway when the speeding Toyota Alphard registration number UBL 314C failed to keep left and ended up ramming into fuel truck registration no SSD 327S/SSD 137Q .
All occupants of the Alphard perished.
