INVESTIGATION OF ROAD SAFETY MEASURES AROUND SCHOOLS IN ADDIS ABABA

Abstract

This WHO report shows that the traffic accident problem is getting worse that deaths from road traffic crashes have increased to 1.35 million a year. That’s nearly 3700 people dying on the world’s roads every day. Rising numbers of fatalities on the roads in low and middle-income countries are linked to development and motorization but occur in large part because road safety concerns are not being adequately addressed as the transport systems develop. While road transport is vital to countries’ development, maximizing the efficiency of road transport systems without adequate attention to safety leads to loss of life, health and wealth. In developing countries like Ethiopia Road traffic accidents are among the leading and top cause of death and injury. The severity of traffic accident is still at distressing stage in Addis Ababa capital of Ethiopia, in the past five years 137,129 accidents has occurred in Addis Ababa, and 9844(7.1%) occurred with in the school zone, putting kids and road users at risk of serious injury and even death. The main objective of this study was investigating the road safety measure around schools in Addis Ababa. Primary and secondary data were used to achieve this objective, primary data was collected by using checklist to assess road safety measures around school while secondary data collected from Addis Ababa police commission to identify schools with high RTA and Identify accident characteristics. During the study an accident data from 2015/16-2019/2020 was taken and 9844 accidents (152 fatal, 674 serious injury,412 slight injury and 8606 property damage) were occurred around schools in Addis Ababa. Based on the fatal accident number recorded, 30 schools with frequent road traffic accident, in the specified period were identified and descriptive analysis was done by using statistical package for social science spss26. The result of the study revealed that most of the accident has caused by vehicle type of minibus upto 12 seats (39% ) and automobiles(38% ) and vehicles with service year greater than 10 years causes 45.94% of the accident. However, all of the vehicles involved in crash doesn’t have reported technical defect. Regarding human factor the result confirms that youngest drivers (18- 30) years, those with experience less than 5 years and junior high-school level educational background took the highest role in the occurrence of the accident at school zone. Most of the accidents were occurred on weekday and during day time at schools’ peak hour highest accident number was recorded. Therefore, it is concluded that the contributing factors of the accidents occurred in the school zones under this study was found to be, service year of vehicle, age, experience and educational background of the drivers. In addition to the cause identified from police commission report, road and environmental factors around school also had a major contribution based on the chi square test result, more than 80% of the road factors has strong association (p<0.05) with accident. With regard to safety measures, Inadequate provision of road safety measures and deteriorated pedestrian facilities was observed. Finally, Demarcating areas around the schools as school zones, preparing school zone road safety guidelines and including in education system, encouraging roads safety awareness creating campaigns and low-cost solutions like walkway repair and maintenance, removing obstacles, high visibility crosswalks, proper area signing, modified drop-off/pick-up operations, and holding traffic safety days are recommended