A Kenyan coach company, EasyCoach, has been presented with the first Global Fleet Champions Award for Fleet Action and Analysis.

The award was presented to the company by the Pamoja Road Safety Initiative during a meeting convened by the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA), which was held at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi, Kenya, yesterday (Monday, May 6), to launch UN Global Road Safety Week 2019.

Global Fleet Champions Awards celebrate the best safety and sustainability standards of fleets anywhere in the world, including in low- and middle-income nations where occupational road risk management is in urgent need of promoting and encouraging.

The Fleet Analysis and Action Award, sponsored by Verizon Connect, recognises organisations that have introduced strong management systems to identify and tackle the safety and environmental impact of vehicles used on their behalf.

The award was judged by members of the Global Fleet Champions standards committee. The judges commended Easy Coach for its use of fleet management information systems to deliver a safe, efficient passenger transport system. 

Judges also praised the company’s policies and procedures that champion safe driving behaviours, making it a role model for other bus companies in Kenya and across sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2016, it is estimated that 13,463 Kenyans died in crashes on the country’s roads – this figure is more than four times higher than the government’s figure of 2,965 deaths in the same year.

In recent years, crashes involving Kenya’s intercity public service buses have made headlines all over the world, but it is the crash that took place at dawn at Fort Ternan in Kericho County in October 2017, where 58 people died, that has become the indisputable emblem of the horror of road crashes in Kenya.