A broken-down tricycle, widely known as an ‘aboboyaa’, may have triggered the chain of events that led to the deadly multiple-vehicle crash at Ofankor Barrier on the Accra-Nsawam Highway, the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) has said.
Felix Owusu, Senior Planning Manager at the NRSA, said preliminary information gathered at the scene pointed to a stationary tricycle as the possible starting point of the crash, which has so far claimed 12 lives.
Speaking on Eyewitness News on Thursday, August 13, 2026, Mr Owusu said a tipper truck carrying sand stopped behind the broken-down tricycle, while two Sprinter buses carrying passengers also stopped behind the truck.
He said another tipper truck then approached the vehicles at high speed and crashed into the line of vehicles.
“From the little we have gathered, there was a stationary tricycle, or what most people call an ‘aboboyaa’. There was a tricycle which had broken down. So I’m sure because of the speed and then also because this is the curve, the distance from where the incident occurred to the curve is not that much. So I’m sure there was nothing he could do. So he just smashed into the last two vehicles in between the two tipper trucks,” he said.
The impact triggered further collisions involving the other vehicles, resulting in multiple casualties.
The crash occurred at about 4 a.m. between the Ofankor Barrier and the John Teye enclave and involved seven vehicles—two tipper trucks, two Sprinter buses, two saloon cars and a tricycle.
The death toll has since risen to 12, while 22 other people are receiving treatment at various hospitals.
Mr Owusu, however, stressed that the preliminary account should not be treated as the official cause of the crash, as the NRSA is awaiting the full police report.
“As I said from the beginning, all that we are hearing are accounts given by bystanders, and so we don’t want to rely solely on that,” he said.
He said investigators would need to obtain accounts from surviving drivers and passengers to establish exactly how the crash occurred.
“We are waiting for the police for a full report that will tell us what exactly happened and how each of the subsequent accidents or crashes occurred,” he said.
