Towards protecting pedestrians as road users

Abstract

Pedestrian crashes constitute a considerable proportion of all road fatalities world-wide. They comprise from 15% to 60% of the road fatalities. Pedestrian fatalities are of great concern to Asian and African cities. The responsibility is on transportation authority to try making a decision (a design) that covers the engineering safety techniques of the recommended RSA (Road Safety Audit). In addition to that, it must include into it, the expected road user behavious (pedestrian and driver). The design should become a policy that amalgamates RSA with traffic psychology. This policy is indirectly modifying behavious rather than inviting pedestrian fatalities. With this in mind, the transport engineer aware of road user behaviour leaving no space for being blamed. In general the public blame engineers for the design, but few blame it on enforcement.The paper aim is to immune the designers from such responsibility if the above policy is adopted. This will place higher demand on enforcement authority to take their role. Authorities need to investigate what developed countries have achieved to improve pedestrian behaviours. Working groups are important in the management and sharing of responsibilities. When authorities have provided a design policy that includes traffic psychology in it then enforcement must takeover and this will reduce role - ambiguity. In the pedestrian subways, bridges and fencing/barrier. Discussions and examples of different cultural behavious in different cities in Asia and Africa is discussed. Some Recommendations are included. With the rapid growth of new road infrastructure in many Asian and African cities in trying to contstruct signal-free corridors and corssings on many arterials, the need for such design policy is not only great but it is urgent. The paper hopes to influence senior managers - in a positive way - on this policy and to best implement it in a new jurisdiction. As enforcement should be the natural reaction.