Le Joola, Ndiaga Ndiaye, cars rapides... : les victimes des transports en commun, l'affaire de tous ?

The Joola, Ndiaga Ndiaye and express coaches... The victims of public tansport accidents. A subject that should concern us all?. – During the night of September 26th to 27th 2002, Africa experienced its very own "Titanic". Off the coast of Senegal, the ferry "Le Joola" (which was operating between Dakar and Ziguinchor) went down with more than 12000 victims. Although the Le Joola tragedy is exceptional with regard to the number of victims, it has joined a long list of disasters involving collective transport (rail or road) in sub-Saharan Africa. In the streets of Africa town in particular, coaches, minibuses and other public transport vehicles claim several victims each day. When these are considered together, the numbers are worryingly high as shown by the figures for Dakar. Via an analysis of the operation of this sector, this article attempts to allocate responsibility for such tragedies. We see that this can be said to lie with the operators who attempt to maximise their revenues via dangerous practices, the civil servants who see a means of gaining a useful side income, the public authorities who are largely satisfied with a service that they are unable to replace, and the users whose limited income means that nothing better can be afforded.