21% of crashes pedestrian-related

The University of Namibia is developing a research plan to identify pedestrian crash risks and community-based interventions that could reduce pedestrian injury in low-income urban areas in Namibia and South Africa, after research found that 21% of accident deaths are pedestrian-related.

According to the World Health Organisation Global report of 2018, Namibia has a crash death rate of 30,4 per 100 000 population, which exceeds the global rate of 18,2 per 100 000.

This was confirmed by researcher Robert Ambunda, who added that 21% of accident deaths are pedestrian related.

“We still have a long way to go in mitigating the impact of road crashes on our communities,” Ambunda said at the eighth Annual Road Safety Conference held at Otjiwarongo on 24-26 April.

According to Ambunda, the University of Namibia is developing a research plan that identifies pedestrian crash risks and community-based interventions that prevent pedestrian injury in low-income urban areas in Namibia and South Africa.

The project case studies will be conducted in Windhoek and Cape Town.

Ambunda said pedestrians make up the majority of the road users in urban Africa. The research project aims to identify the position of factors that cause crashes in low-income road users, and what potential ideas and measures can be developed to address these challenges.

“What we have also found is that there is little understanding of how road crashes affect pedestrians in southern Africa … we have the capacity to enforce interventions,” he said.

The project intends to look at community-based interventions that would help reduce crashes in the future, Ambunda said. The research team will collect crash data from the National Road Safety Council, which they intend to use to identify and map hotspots for crashes.

Ambunda added that they will use engagement tools such as community-based surveys and groups that will focus on the perceptions, risks and future prevention of pedestrian injury during a crash. These interventions will be used to test for various features.

Speaking at the same event, an associate research engineer at the Alabama Transportation Institute, Kofi Adanu, said human factors had been the leading cause of crashes.

“We know and can establish that human factors contribute to the highest proportion of crashes and we should take a step back and think about motor vehicle accidents being related to human factors … All this is related to socio-economic characteristics, economic characteristics and political regimes,” Adanu said.