Why Kenya should 'fly' her roads like an airline this festive season

Every December, Kenya turns into one long road home. Families travel at night, matatus race against time, buses overflow with hope, and drivers push limits in the name of arrival.

Yet December is also when our roads betray us most brutally. By early December 2025, more than 4,450 people had already lost their lives on Kenyan roads, surpassing last year’s total before Christmas itself arrived. That means dozens of families will enter the New Year not with celebration, but with silence and grief.

This season feels different. For the first time in many years, the warning has not come only from NTSA or the police. It came from the Judiciary. Chief Justice Martha Koome stepped forward, leading a multi-agency response through the National Council on the Administration of Justice.

Mobile courts, instant processing of traffic cases, coordinated enforcement, and firm application of traffic penalties signal that the country is finally treating road deaths as a justice issue, not an inconvenience.

Simple fines that can be paid legally and immediately are quietly dismantling bribery at the roadside and restoring the rule of law.

Cabinet has reinforced this shift by approving a new smart driving licence system that links drivers directly to their behaviour. Offences will now accumulate consequences. Licences can be suspended or withdrawn. For the first time, recklessness will follow a driver beyond the roadblock. These reforms arrive late, after thousands of lives have been lost, but they are welcome. Yet laws alone do not save lives. People do.

To understand what must change, we must look at the safest transport system humanity has ever built. Aviation. Planes do not avoid crashes because pilots are perfect. They avoid them because safety is cultural, layered, and unforgiving of shortcuts. Before every flight, pilots conduct honest self assessments.

Are they ill, fatigued, stressed, emotionally unstable, or impaired in any way? If the answer is yes, they step aside. Not out of fear, but responsibility. Colleagues are empowered to question each other. Passengers trust the system because everyone inside it understands that silence kills.

Kenya must now divide responsibility the same way, into three unavoidable roles.

First is the driver. Every driver carrying human beings must begin each journey with a self check as serious as a pilot’s. If you are tired, angry, sick, intoxicated, distracted, or emotionally unstable, you have no moral right to drive. Delaying a trip is painful. Burying a loved one is irreversible.

Second is the passenger. In aviation, no one boards quietly if something feels wrong. On Kenyan roads, silence has become deadly.

Passengers must refuse speed, demand seat belts, insist on rest, and reject drunk or reckless drivers. Reporting dangerous driving or corruption is not betrayal. It is protection. Using emergency lines to report danger may feel uncomfortable, but discomfort is cheaper than a coffin.

Third is the vehicle owner. Owning a vehicle is not merely an income strategy.

It is a public trust. Proper maintenance, working brakes, tyres, seat belts, and humane driver schedules are not expenses. They are the cost of dignity. Profit built on risk is blood money.

Now to the readers of this column. You may feel few compared to the millions travelling this season. But disciplined minorities have always changed Kenya, just as they do during elections. If you are reading this, consider yourself appointed. A Green Ambassador for life.

Your assignment is urgent and simple. Practise a three action code in every journey. Educate by naming one safety rule before departure. Report danger or corruption immediately through official channels. Expose recklessness by refusing to participate, even if it delays you.

This is not the season for politeness. It is the season for courage. A nation that cannot protect its travellers cannot claim to love its people. Let institutions enforce the law. Let citizens enforce the culture. Arrive alive, then celebrate. Think green, act green!