The National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) has announced that drivers who hit 60 years old will soon need to renew their licenses every year instead of every three years.
Samuel Musumba, NTSA’s Manager for Road Safety Programs, made the announcement on Radio Generation Thursday, explaining that the change comes with a new requirement: annual medical assessments.
“Once you hit 60 years, you will be required to renew your license every year and not every three years,” Musumba said on radio. “We will be asking you for a medical report. It is not about knowing what you are going through, but it will be a report just like any other.”
The idea is that as people age, their health can change quickly. Vision deteriorates, reaction times slow, and medical conditions that affect driving ability can develop between checkups.
Annual medical assessments could catch these issues before they become dangerous on the road. NTSA insists this isn’t about invading privacy but about keeping everyone safer, including the older drivers themselves, their passengers, and everyone else sharing the road with them.
On paper, it makes sense. Regular health screenings for older drivers are common in many countries. The logic is sound: if you want to operate a vehicle, you need to prove you’re physically capable of doing so safely.
But, here’s the thing. NTSA is proposing this while the fundamentals of road safety in Kenya remain a disaster.
The proposal hasn’t even been submitted to Parliament yet, meaning it’s still a long way from becoming law. It needs legislative approval and public participation before it applies to anyone. Meanwhile, the actual problems killing people on Kenyan roads continue unchecked.
Consider what NTSA should be focusing on instead. Kenya’s roads are often poorly maintained, with potholes that can swallow entire wheels and road markings that disappeared years ago, if they ever existed at all.
READ: Kenya Among the Most Dangerous Places to Drive in the World
Drunk driving remains rampant, with inadequate enforcement and laughably few roadside checks. Overloaded matatus operate with impunity.
Unroadworthy vehicles with faulty brakes and bald tires somehow pass inspection. Corruption in the licensing system means people who can’t actually drive still get behind the wheel.
These are the issues actually causing carnage on the roads. Not 62-year-olds who might need glasses.
NTSA’s track record on its own initiatives doesn’t inspire confidence either. The smart driving license program, launched in 2017 with a target of issuing 5 million cards, has produced only 2.1 million after eight years.
An Auditor General report found over half a million unprinted cards worth over KES 170 million sitting unused in storage with no deployment plan. Last year, NTSA printed just 342,492 licenses against a target of 400,000, missing by nearly 15%.
The government has now removed NTSA from managing the program entirely, handing it over to private investors through a public-private partnership.
So when this same authority announces a new system requiring annual renewals and medical checks for older drivers, it’s fair to ask whether they can actually implement it.
Will the medical assessment process be efficient? Will there be long queues? Will corruption creep in, with some doctors rubber-stamping approvals for a fee?
None of this means the proposal is inherently bad. Annual medical checks for older drivers could save lives if implemented properly. Still, priorities matter. When your house is on fire, you don’t start repainting the bedroom.
NTSA should first demonstrate it can handle the basics. Until then, adding another bureaucratic hurdle for drivers over 60 feels less like a safety measure and more like busywork from an authority that needs to show it’s doing something, even if it’s not addressing the real problems.
