Designing Safer Roads: How Technology and Landscape Architecture Can Cut Road Accidents in Nigeria

By Precious Enanga-Che Ovat

Nigeria has been recording a high volume of road accidents, with a huge consequence of preventable deaths. Accident statistics compiled by Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and published by National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), confirm this worrisome trend.

For instance, in 2025, in the third quarter of the year, 16,268 persons were reported to have been involved in 2,434 accident cases. These incidents involved a whopping 7,933 casualties, which encompassed 6,856 injured and 1,077 dead persons.

During what was styled “ember months campaigns” of that year, FRSC adduced reasons for these mishaps to include: reckless driving (especially over speeding and dangerous overtaking), distracted driving (caused mainly by use of hand-held cell phones), overloading of vehicles, use of worn-out and expired motor tyres, night journeying and sleeping while driving due to fatigue.

Some motorists add lack of enforcement after crashes, and crude interventions like random speed bumps, as other causative factors. Efforts made to curb the anomaly over the years, had resulted to several regulatory measures, and legislations; highway patrol teams, traffic wardens, vehicles inspection offices and the FRSC are some results of these efforts. Notwithstanding, road traffic mishaps have persisted.

This article examines this teething issue from the perspective of landscape architecture and offers efficient and cost-effective remedies to the challenge.
Fatalities can be avoided through the way roads are shaped, read, experienced and managed.

This is where technology and landscape architecture can intervene to drastically reduce accidents before they happen. Currently, roads in Nigeria are being engineered purely for vehicle movement, yet other factors such as human error, fatigue, poor visibility, weather extremes and pedestrian behaviour, can affect the outcomes on the road.

Landscape architecture advocates careful and strategic planning to turn roads into living corridors that encourage play, socialization and life. Design moulds behaviour, and changes patterns of living.

When design and human patterns of living blend, far reaching effects bear on the environment and the physiological processes of the human body, including good health, emotional balance and longevity of life.

I would outline some simple initiatives that governments can enforce to ensure road mishaps are reduced to a barest minimum. Plantings can create changes of vegetation types along transit routes, and thereby, impact motorists’ behaviour along roads. Usually, the rural areas tend to have more thick and wild vegetation along roads.

A good approach, therefore, would be to prune vegetation leading towards human settlements, whether urban areas, sub-urban or villages. Changes in vegetation would visually and psychologically, adjust the consciousness of motorists, and alert them that they are within the proximity of a town, or another village, without any need for enforcement.

However, this is to be used alongside other methods. Caution must be taken not to clutter junctions and sharp bends with tall vegetation. Low plantings or dwarf species at junctions, and sharp bends, would enhance visual continuity, while taller planting can be used elsewhere.

Signage can be beneficial and detrimental, and the use of signage in Nigeria seems to tend towards the latter. Streets are clustered with several signage that create visual chaos thereby resulting to cognitive fatigue. It is needful for government to remove all unnecessary signage erected on the roads, so that road users can clearly see road names, speed limits, and other important road signs.

Road signs are very important in aiding safe motoring. Unfortunately, Nigeria has very few of these road signs. A lot of crashes commonly occur at poorly defined junctions.

It is, indeed, advisable to have road signs tell motorists that they are arriving at a junction at least 1.5km away for the junctions of highways, and about 300m away for the junctions of minor roads.
Speed limit signs should be erected and reinforced before sharp bends, junctions, villages, schools, and roundabouts, with repeated signs placed at regular intervals, while road markings should be used to instruct drivers on how to use the road, and every motorist should learn the road markings and strictly adhere to them.

The government may have to enforce fines and penalties for motorists who defy the law, as a means of caution and reprimand. Here, technology could be useful in identifying offenders.

CCTV cameras, and speed cameras, must be installed at traffic lights, along the roads, and other designated areas, to deter people from breaking the law, while strict adherence should be a rule.

Furthermore, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence, (AI) can be deployed. By using data from FRSC, places where accidents occur the most can be accurately predicted, so that interventions can be proposed for those areas.

Pedestrians are the most ignored road users in Nigeria, and they account for a significant proportion of road fatalities. Motorists wrongly assume that pedestrians should find their way or wait indefinitely at crossings.

So, when sidewalks disappear, or crossings are absent, and where junctions prioritise vehicle flow alone, pedestrians are at risks of danger. Pedestrian accidents also occur where crossings are far apart, or non-existent, and when the pedestrian sidewalks are flooded or taken over by road traders, thereby, pushing pedestrians into traffic lanes.

A solution is placement of several traffic lights along busy minor roads, so that pedestrians can have crossings in closer proximity, while overhead walkways, and underground tunnels, can be on highways, to ensure that pedestrians do not crossroads that allow high speed.

Meanwhile, pedestrians deserve more width than the standard 1.5m wide sidewalks used across several roads. Such pedestrian routes should use permeable paving to reduce the pressure on the drainage system.

We ought to include bio swales between roads and sidewalks as a way of tackling flooding, while metal barriers should be used near crossings and junctions, to safeguard pedestrians, since these would be areas where they would be mostly seen.

Physically challenged pedestrians, minors traveling alone and women traveling with children also need to be given consideration. Consequently, walkways should be ramped to flush with the roads at crossings, and tactile paving should be used.

These strategies are a win-win for the government because they’ll create jobs for several people, reduce pressure on the FRSC, reduce the fatalities on the road, and generate revenue from defaulters.

Therefore, the government should leverage on the expertise of qualified practitioners to deliver on major road projects, which should be done in collaboration with Ministry of Transportation, Federal Road Safety Corpse, and tech experts to deliver measurable results.

Conclusion: Road safety in Nigeria remains a national challenge that goes far beyond traffic enforcement. With rail transport largely absent and air travel inaccessible to most citizens, roads continue to carry the burden of everyday mobility and economic activity. Yet high rates of crashes and fatalities persist despite decades of legislation and regulation.This reality exposes a critical gap: laws alone cannot make roads safe. A fundamental shift is needed; one that puts safer road design and smarter infrastructure at the heart of Nigeria’s transport system.

However, advances in technology, use of AI and, particularly, the field of Landscape Architecture are new mechanisms to tackle the age long challenge of road fatalities. Landscape architecture deploys effective and efficient design strategies that guarantee safety and functionality of roads.

It would thus be beneficial for government to leverage on this nascent field to promote and enhance a functional and sustainable roads transport system.

Precious E. Ovat holds a Master of Architecture degree from Bells University of Technology, Ota, Nigeria, and holds a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from Newcastle University Upon Tyne , UK.