Problem: Each year, 1.35 million people are killed on the worlds’ roads, and a further 50 million are injured, with the vast majority of these (over 90%) occurring in LMICs. A critical share of these fatalities are Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs)

Solution: Adoption of the Safe System approach is necessary to prevent fatal and serious crashes with dedicated road safety facilities and provisions.

Recommendation: Key messages for road engineers and designers is to include vulnerable road users in the design process and include self-questions such as “what if a child /blind /elderly /disabled person is crossing.

Read More:

• Webinar on Addressing Road Safety Worldwide: Vulnerable Road Users, Human Factors & RS in LMIC

Problem: VRU crashes occur due to careless crossing, disobeying traffic lights, jaywalking, misjudgment of speed gap and lack of proper facilities, but also due to driver inexperience, misjudgment, or driver disobeying and not giving right of the way to VRUs.

Solution: Key requirements include giving road users enough time, the road must provide a safe field of view for all road users. The road environment must correspond with road user’s perception logic, covering as many angles/points of view as possible.

Recommendation: Road design should include a self-explaining and failure-forgiving road addressing the safety, mobility and travel comfort needs of the road users.

Read More:

• Vulnerable Road Users: Diagnosis of Design and Operational Safety Problems and Potential Countermeasures

Problem: LMICs have greater variety and intensity of traffic mixing the slow-moving and vulnerable non-motorized road users, as well as the motorcycles with fast-moving motorized vehicles.

Solution: Measures to enhance VRUs safety along road sections include: visual segregation by edge markings, wider and paved shoulder, appropriate traffic lane width, segregated footpath, segregated lane for cyclists or mopeds and proper crossing facilities.

Recommendation: To ensure compliance, measures of communication, education and enforcement, including special warning signs and campaigns should be employed.

Read More:

• Proceedings of the PIARC International Seminar on: “Road Safety in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Issues and Countermeasures”

Problem: Fatalities amongst VRUs are higher in LMICs due to lack of resources to provide or maintain adequate and safe infrastructure, land use planning problems and unsafe users behavior, as well as post-crash response services.

Solution: Road Safety Audits and Inspections enhance safety. Target elements for RSA and RSI are the risk factors for crash occurrence or injury severity. The point of view of every kind of road user should be taken into consideration, along with the way interactions happen between different types of road users or transport modes. Post-crash care should be enhanced.

Recommendation: Checklists can be used to ensure safety aspects have not been overlooked.

Read More:

• Proceedings of the Internal Workshop “Policies and Programs for Road Safety Management”