Road accidents - Prevent or punish?

By Lionel WIJESIRI

The year 2012 began with some shocking news! The number of road accidents in Sri Lanka during 2011 reached 37,000 killing 2,500 peoples, and maiming 600. These are devastating figures and should be taken for serious study. Years ago, a comprehensive study was done, using British and American crash reports as data. It was found that 57% of crashes were due solely to driver factors, 27% to combined roadway and driver factors, 6% to combined vehicle and driver factors, 3% solely to roadway factors, 3% to combined roadway, driver, and vehicle factors, 2% solely to vehicle factors and 1% to combined roadway and vehicle factors.

The direct causes of road accidents are the same in Sri Lanka as anywhere else - namely, the strong physical forces of motorised traffic are not adequately controlled. Thus, when we have higher road accident/vehicle rates than other parts of the world, why are the physical forces of motorized traffic more poorly controlled in our country than elsewhere?

In North America and Western Europe the potential growth in road accidents caused by the increase in motor vehicles, has been counter-balanced by effective road safety programs implementing a number of road accident countermeasures; but we have not yetbeen able to do so.

There is a chain of causes from the inadequately controlled forces bringing about each accident to the institutional, political, economic, and social reasons behind this inadequacy.There are two major levels of causation, the accident level and the societal level. For each single accident one factor or a combination of factors may be established as a cause. Thesecauses or factors usually pertain to the road, the vehicle, or the road user.

Road factors

Even if our road network is expanding fast, and even if the maintenance standard has started improving lately, there is still potential for improving the safety standards of the roads -e.g., designing junctions, installing guardrails, making space and crossing for pedestrians, road lighting.

Although road factors are rarely judged to be the main accident cause (because road users are supposed to adjust their behaviour to the road conditions), improved road safety standards often reduce the risk of road accidents. As pointed out earlier, road construction and maintenance are now working relatively well, but unfortunately we do not accord high priority to safety in this field.

Vehicle factors

To ensure roadworthiness of motor vehicles, standards for newly imported or produced vehicles - as well as technical standards for vehicles in use - are required. In developing countries like us safety standards may be compromised because safety equipment, spare parts, and maintenance work cost money.

A country that does not set and enforce vehicle standards is likely to get vehicles imported that cannot be sold in countries with higher standards. The public service vehicles are important to road safety in our country. Their roadworthiness seems to leave a lot to be desired, such as protection of passengers in case of an accident, maintenance of brakes, steering and tyres, and control of maximum speed.

Human factors are often the most important road accident cause.

Driving too fast, driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, other reckless driving, inattention to other road users, overloading vehicles with goods and people, and driving for too many hours undoubtedly contribute significantly to road accidents.

Whether road, vehicle, or human factors 3/4 or a combination 3/4 are the main causes of road accidents is a matter of judgment.

But whatever the main cause is, there is no simple relation between the cause and the counter-measure as discussed below.

Accident problems

The pedestrians and the public service vehicle passengers make up 50 percent of fatalities and injuries on the road.

Measures should be taken to protect these road user groups first. But such measures are well-developed in motorised countries, and those that are developed may not work the same way in our country.

The public transport operators and drivers are limited groups to which special attention should be paid.

If not already there, requirements should be made about the driver's age, training, blood alcohol content, and hours of driving, as well as to the organisation of public transport.

The requirements should be enforced, and fines should be high enough to counter the profit made from overloading and maximizing the number of trips.

However, the economic incentives making unsafe and illegal public transport profitable should be examined and possibly changed.

More frequent regular inspection of the public service vehicles, as well as random roadside inspection to avoid special spare parts being used for inspection only, may also help.Construction requirements for public service vehicles to protect passengers in case of accident should also be made.

Tanzania introduced mandatory speed governors or speed delimiters for public service vehicles in 15 years ago. It is working fine. Zimbabwe failed at the same measure because the speed governors are too easily manipulated. The European Union has recently introduced a requirement for speed delimiters for heavy vehicles.

If this is effective in reducing speed, the European standard for speed delimiters could be adopted. The public transport is organised and operated differently in Sri Lanka than in Europe or North America. Knowledge about how to reduce these accidents is therefore not easily available, and needs to be developed.

Protecting pedestriansIndustrialised countries have also made pedestrian safety a high priority compared to drivers and passengers of private cars. However, protecting pedestrians from road accidents is more complex than protecting most other road user groups. Mandatory training, enforcement or physical protection of the pedestrians can only be applied to a very limited degree. Reducing pedestrian accidents can mainly be done through countermeasures directed at the drivers, such as speed control, speed calming devices, and raised pedestrian crossings. Reflective tags for the pedestrians have the potential for reducing pedestrian accidents during darkness. Our pedestrians may also face a different situation than those in industrialised countries. Street vendors often occupy sidewalks in urban areas, and drivers do not respect the rights of pedestrians.

There is no single measure that can considerably reduce pedestrian accidents.

A project on child and pedestrian safety in Nairobi proposed policies and measures for improving the traffic safety for these groups, in terms of a comprehensive road safety program including twelve main fields of action and more than eighty specific counter-measures. Based on this proposal a shorter list of high priority countermeasures for implementation and evaluation could be the next step towards improved pedestrian safety in Sri Lanka.

With the exception of accidents particular to Sri Lanka, there is a wealth of knowledge on how to improve road safety, on the road accident countermeasures.

The counter-measures described in the road safety literature are mostly developed in the motorised parts of the world, and their effects have been studied there. Consequently, these measures may not be optimal for our road accident problems, or their effects may not be the same. To the extent that Sri Lankan road accidents are different from those of developed countries, this is true.

Therefore, counter-measures to reduce public transport and pedestrian accidents need to be developed to suit the local conditions.

On the other hand, there is reason to believe that counter-measures such as speed control, vehicle inspection, and elevated pedestrian crossings can be effective in reducing these accidents as well.

Although developing and evaluating countermeasures for accidents particular to Sri Lanka should not be neglected, there is no doubt that the main problem in our country is implementation of accident counter-measures rather than conventional road accident counter-measures are not working.

This is a problem of management rather than road safety, and parts of it pertain not only to road safety but to many sectors of our society as well.

I propose "an integrated approach towards traffic safety management, development and implementation," integrating the road safety action and the management action. I recommend development of implementation plans and continuous evaluation of the implementation process and operations.