Nearly 19 months after a blue Isuzu hit a building in Ntinda, Kampala, police still have not traced the man who was driving it.
His employer was in court on Friday instead, facing a charge over missing driver records.
Annet Phiona Nakafu, 36, pleaded guilty at City Hall Court to failing to keep driver records. The Daily Monitor reported that Senior Principal Grade One Magistrate Nicholas Aisu fined her Shs500,000, or four months in Luzira Prison if she defaults.
The charge had nothing to do with how the Isuzu was driven. It was about paperwork she did not have.
The crash happened at about 9am on 13 April 2025 in Kalinabiri Zone, Ntinda. The vehicle damaged a building. The driver, according to court records, fled and left the Isuzu behind.
Police impounded it. When Nakafu went to collect it, she could not give officers the man’s particulars. She had no driver records at all, not even his name, address or driving permit number.
Prosecutors charged her under Sections 142 and 164(1) of the Traffic and Road Safety Act, Cap 347. She admitted the offence. The same report says Aisu weighed her guilty plea, her remorse and the court time she saved by not contesting.
Without any driver records, police had no name to follow. They told the court the driver has still not been found.
The report mentions damage to a building and no injuries. It does not say who owns the building or whether anyone has been paid for the damage.
The duty to keep driver records is not new. An earlier consolidated text of the Act, published by the Uganda Legal Information Institute, requires anyone who employs a driver to keep a written record of the driver’s name and driving permit number.
That record must be produced whenever a uniformed police officer asks for it.
Police had also been telling owners to keep driver records. In July 2025, about three months after the Ntinda crash, traffic police spokesperson Michael Kananura said in a post carried by Pulse Uganda that people borrowing vehicles and fleeing crashes had become common. Some, he said, abandon the vehicles.
His advice to owners was to “know who you’re giving your vehicle to and keep proper records”. The post did not name any case.
It did set out the cost of getting it wrong. Under the same two sections, Kananura said, an owner who cannot produce the driver’s details can face a fine of up to 300 currency points (Shs6 million) or up to six months in prison. A court can also impose both.
Nakafu was fined Shs500,000. That is one-twelfth of the ceiling Kananura described.
The problem is bigger than one Isuzu. Police figures for 2025 show 26,044 road crashes and 5,383 deaths, about 15 a day, up from 5,144 deaths the year before.
Traffic police director Lawrence Niwabiine told the launch of that annual report at Police Headquarters in Naguru that 2,681 crashes had unknown causes, largely hit-and-run incidents. That is roughly one crash in ten.
Where a vehicle is left behind, driver records can decide whether anyone is ever found. Kananura said police turn to the owner for the driver’s details when a driver flees and the vehicle stays.
If the owner supplies them, he said, the vehicle is released and officers go after the driver. If the owner has no driver records to hand over, as in Nakafu’s case, the owner is the one answering charges.
Kananura’s advice was to keep a copy of the driver’s National ID and driving licence, or at least the licence number. Good driver records cost an owner almost nothing. The lack of them cost Nakafu a conviction and a fine.
A name, an address and a licence number would have taken minutes to write down. Nearly 19 months on, the driver has not been found, and the woman who employed him is the one who stood in the dock.
