Human Factors and Safety Evaluation of Active and Passive Protection Measures at Road Crossing to Encourage Safe Road User Behavior among Road Users in Developing Countries
Added on 2021-02-02
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1. Area of Research Human factors and safety 2. Research Title Safety evaluation of various active and passive protection measures at road crossing to encourage safe road user behavior among road users in developing countries. 3. Brief Overview: Global ContextSafe, sound and sustainable mobility is one of the fundamental necessities of human being. Unfortunately, mobility or transport has become a ‘global tragedy’ with the mounting trend of crash. Road traffic crashes have now emerged as the eighth leading cause of death globally. More than 1.35 million people die and 20 to 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries each year as a result of road traffic crashes (WHO, 2018). Among the Road traffic injuries (RTI) victims, vulnerable road users (VRU) include pedestrians, motorcyclists and bicyclists, representing more than half of the global deaths due to road traffic accident .With the rate of 27.5 deaths per 100,000 population, the risk of a road traffic death is more than three times higher in low and middle income countries (LMIC) as compared to the high-income countries (HIC) according to Global Status on Road safety (WHO, 2018). RTIs are now the leading killer of people aged 5-29 years (WHO, 2018). The burden is disproportionately borne by pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, in particular those living in developing countries. The problem of pedestrian accidents is growing over the years and has become serious in developing countries (Jadaan & Baner, 1993), Hence, pedestrian safety has always been a major challenge for the transportation researchers and authorities all over the world. Despite that, pedestrian fatality and injury remain at large, especially in the developing countries (Vasconcellos, 2005). International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) findings in the latest Global status report (WHO, 2018) show that 88% of pedestrians travel on one or two-star roads, the lower category of safety standards of iRAP star Rating system, among the surveyed 54 countries in the world. In RTI, 20% victims are children, counted around 262,000 fatality and 10 million injury globally (Peden et al., 2004). This warrants a shift to the child health issues which has been denied so far in road safety. More people has been killed on road rather than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and diarrheal diseases (WHO, 2018).Workers in the developing world are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the risk of road traffic crashes .Workers at risk include drivers of commercial trucks and buses; workers who are not professional drivers, but who drive smaller trucks or passenger vehicles provided by their employer; workers who drive personal vehicles for work purposes; pedestrians, particularly roadside workers; and commuters (Wikipedia, 2017). 4. Problem statement: Bangladesh context Bangladesh, the ninth most populous country of the world, has a dense road network of more than 20,000 km highways where traffic volume is unexpectedly high (AADT > 25000 on major Highways, as per Roads and Highways Department current survey data). Like most of the developing countries, it has a heterogeneous traffic, consists of bus, passenger car, auto (three-
wheeler), motor-cycle and non-motorized vehicle (NMV) which ply on the same right of way without any physical segregation. World Health Organization (WHO, 2018) postulates that per year 24954 fatalities occur on Bangladeshi roads whereas, police reports only 2376 fatalities per year. On the other hand, nationwide survey on the cause and effect of injuries by Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey 2016 revealed that 23166 fatalities occur annually on roads with a rate of 14.4 per 100,000 people due to road traffic accidents for all age groups (CIPRB, 2016).Therefore, road crashes are increasing at an alarming rate and particularly the pedestrians are becoming more and more vulnerable as the direct consequences of rapid growth in population, motorization and urbanization. This in turn is causing a rapid deterioration of road safety and the problem is turning out to be quite severe by international standards (Rahman, Anwar, & Sabreena 2007). Also, the cost of crash amounts to USD316 million annually (iRAP, 2013). In Bangladesh, vulnerable road users accounted for nearly 75% of road crashes (Anjuman & Siddiqui, 2007).Another study shows that pedestrians are the worst sufferers whose share in total fatalities varies around 50 percent .Pedestrians are clearly the most vulnerable road user group largely due to their lack of protection and limited biomechanical tolerance to violent forces if hit by a vehicle. Despite the rapid level of motorization in Bangladesh, pedestrians form the largest single user group (Hoque, Hossain, & Rahman ,2013) This can be co-relate with the fact that, the pedestrian facilities of Bangladeshi road is more vulnerable condition as 97% of the road network are designated as star rating of one or two by iRAP (iRAP, 2013). Among the pedestrians, The children are highly vulnerable in the traffic situation compared with many other countries of the world. The incidence of overall child involvement in road accident fatalities in Bangladesh is found to be very high, accounting for about twenty two percent and National Highways contributing at least 37% of all children fatalities is two times higher than those Urban Roads (Anjuman & Siddiqui, 2007). There are also a number of garment factories whose workers numbering over ten thousand faced considerable risks of accidents in crossing the highway to reach their factories (PPRC, 2014). With those scenarios of roadside land use, highest pedestrian road crossing flow is observed in school and industrial zone (iRAP, 2013).Both of these road user groups, children and workers, usually use the road during the peak hours and such substantial pedestrian flow needs special attention while using road specially, while crossing roads. Here, although at some places pedestrian foot over bridges are in place, it is also acknowledged that these facilities are often not used by the pedestrian in Bangladesh, rather, they tend to walk at grade choosing shortest distance (iRAP, 2013). In regional context, Bangladesh as a signatory country of UNESCAP has the obligation to meet the regional road safety goals, targets and indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2016-2020, where pedestrian death rate was set to reduce by one third for the ESCAP region (UNESCAP,2018). 5. Discussion and Literature Review Literature suggests that historically the influx of pedestrians is influenced by weather, advertised sales at certain locations, presence of major traffic attractors, such as, educational institutes and work places, etc. (AASHTO,1990). A vast majority of pedestrians, living in developing countries, are from the economically challenged section of the society. They often rely on foot to commute to
their destination, as a means of transportation. Although, walking appears to be a major contributor to sustainable transport strategy in Bangladesh, it is the motorists, not pedestrians, who normally receive much attention and a greater share of priority (Mahmud, Ahmed, & Hoque, 2014). According to Christie (1996), young pedestrian casualties generally come from the poorer sectors of the community, which could be related to the industrial worker, specially for the garments worker of Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, women workers account for 85% of the total workforce in the garment industry (Chowdhury, 2018). In their study, they applied logistic regression and found that while solo female pedestrians are the most willing to use available crossing treatments, female pedestrians in groups are the most likely subset to exhibit unsafe crossing behavior (Ferenchak & Katirai, 2017).There is also a knowledge gap in the area of road crossing, in general, however, due to this, particularly school going children and the industry workers often become the victims of road accidents. Quimby (2001) reveals that children’s knowledge level is inadequate in developing countries and lack of road safety knowledge leading to unsafe behavior. In addition to that, further studies have shown that child pedestrian injuries are the highest on school days and during the time that school starts and ends (Newbury et al., 2008). According to Schwebel (2017), the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children in the United States not to cross streets independently until they become at least 10 years old. They suggested the same for the children of the LMICs as well. Previous literature showed that, human error causes 95% of road crashes. Hence, knowledge gap between pedestrian crash risk and associated behavior could be minimized with appropriate education (Tulu, Get al., 2013). Chen, Saleh, and Pai (2018) found that crossing time, sudden movements, running a red light and walking outside the crosswalk were selected as the behaviors representing pedestrian risks. Whereas, required time to cross the road, looking at both directions before crossing, waiting for traffic to stop, engaging in conflict with vehicles are the indicators of risky behavior identified by Hatfield and Murphy (2006). Through survey by iRAP, (2013) in Bangladesh, many engineering solutions prescribed for tackling pedestrian crash, which include footpaths, pedestrian fencing, speed management, traffic calming and location choice for crossing. In forgiving design concept, designing pedestrian fencing can be considered as a passive safety measures for school children and workers. Here, location choice for pedestrian crossing can be guided by the placing of pedestrian fencing as pedestrian fencing is a common engineering solution to guide pedestrians away from unsafe crossing locations. On the other hand speed management and traffic calming can be regarded as an active measure for reducing the speed of the vehicle, and could be a safeguard against other errors or mistaking behavior, particularly from the driver's end. In Bangladesh, a pilot demonstrated project on National Highway (N2) were implemented with low-cost speed management interventions with safe crossing. After implementation of such interventions showed 63% reduction of number of crashes and over 70% reduction of the number of people killed or injured (CIPRB & Safe crossing, 2016). Although education programs can encourage people not to run across the road, fencing will physically remove the temptation (Hatfield & Murphy, 2009). Installation of fence, direction of flow, existence of median, traffic volume, availability of crosswalk and foot-over bridge are also found to affect peoples’ choice whether to jaywalk or not (Hasan & Napiah, 2017). When a
jaywalker influences other pedestrians to follow, it is called ‘herd jaywalking’, which is also a significant factor (Shiwakoti, Tay, & Stasinopoulos, 2017) and can often be related to local pedestrian characteristics prevailing in LMIC countries like Bangladesh. Moreover, the studies on the effect of land use on jaywalking is rather uncommon as such unplanned land use and encroachments that are readily seen in LMIC cannot be commonly observed in the developed world. However, there is limited research on assessing the likely benefit of “cattle fencing” on pedestrian route choice (Smith, 2013). Turner et al. (2012) have reviewed the effect of fencing around crossings and demonstrated that a reduction of 20% is plausible. In general, Bangladeshi pedestrians are slower than those of western countries, but are faster or alike compared to some Asian counterparts. Such finding does not validate the sustainability of the adoption of foreign design and parameters for pedestrian facilities in Bangladesh (Rahman et al., 2012). This conclusion is valid for other available active and passive measures to encourage safe pedestrian crossing behavior. There are some wide differences between developed and developing countries in culture, resources, road and traffic conditions, and in road user behavior, attitudes and knowledge. Such differences will undoubtedly affect the transferability of solutions from one region of the world to another, and even from one country to another (Downing, 1991). Therefore, it is imperative that improvements are accompanied by evaluation studies. Moreover, in LMIC, little works have been done to develop VRU friendly highway design instead of following the traditional design of developed world. Pedestrian needs to be a priority on national plan, policy and programs, not be treated as isolated case in any way. Traffic related policy interventions and strategies of HICs is transferable to LMICs but transferability of developed country solution to developing country not certain, needs to consider local condition and demand. Solutions are not readily available, need innovative design and new policies (Dinesh, 2002). 6. Aim and Objectives of the Research The proposed research is to introduce evidence-based recommendation for pedestrian behavior improvement while crossing highways. The study is based on Bangladesh and specially focuses on most vulnerable pedestrian groups, i.e., the school students and factory workers. The study will identify best plausible active and passive measures and evaluate their efficacy. That is, a comprehensive set of intervention package including stakeholders education, innovation speed management design for high pedestrian zone, active community engagement programs etc., will be evaluated. The study also aims at providing a framework policy guideline to systematically instill proper road crossing behavior among the road users for the developing countries. The specific objectives of this research are: 1.To conduct an in-depth literature review to examine best practices in pedestrian safety while crossing the road across the world with particular emphasis on children and workers in the developing countries. 2.To identify potential interventions, such as, speed management, raised pedestrian crossing and pedestrian fencing options, etc. for the school children and industrial workers. 3.To evaluation of efficacy of the active and passive interventions found in (2), with the phase by phase field installation, both separately and through a combined approach, for the controlled and managed movement of pedestrian while crossing highways.
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