Mitigating road traffic incidents ; With psychosocial approach

Etse Ladzekpo Apr - 20 - 2015 , 03:17

Road deaths and injuries are grave health and safety concerns for many developed and developing countries across the world. Governments in developed countries are taking firm and decisive actions to stem the menace on the roads and to protect vulnerable road users, particularly.

The Parliament in Sweden, for example, wrote into law the “Vision Zero” plan, in 1997: intended to eliminate road deaths and injuries altogether. In effect, the Swedes “vowed” not to accept any deaths and injuries on their roads.

In 2010, some 100 countries under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) declared the period 2011 to 2020 as the Decade of Action for Road Safety (UN Decade of Action, 2010). The rationale for this bold and historic cause of action was to draw the attention of world governments to the incessant and needless road deaths and injuries across the globe; and to put in place actionable measures “with the goal to stabilise and then to reduce the forecast level of road traffic fatalities around the world” (UN Decade of Action, 2010).

The World Health Organisation had reported that 1.24 million people die on the world’s roads annually and another 20 million people sustain varying degrees of injuries. It is therefore estimated that at the current rate, the deaths and injuries could double in the next decade if nothing is done by world governments to stem the epidemic (UN Decade of Action, 2010).

The majority of the deaths and injuries occur in developing countries, such as Ghana, where there are fewer vehicles, compared to, for example, the United Kingdom or Sweden. Ghana’s contribution to the menace of road deaths and injuries is 2000 deaths and 14000 injuries, respectively, on average every year (NRSC, 2010).

Ghana’s road safety problems are compounded, according to road safety research reports, by driver incompetence and lack of effective training, non-existent road markings and poor road signage and porous enforcement and increased vehicular population.

Unfortunately, increase motorisation does not equate with the enhancement in the knowledge, skills and competences necessary to drive these vehicles; neither does it match improvement in the state of many of the road systems in the country.

Law enforcement agencies are equally not adequately equipped, in resources and knowledge, to apply

road traffic legislation consistently and rigorously.

The acquisition of commercial vehicle driver status must require an appropriate structured training and learning curriculum. However, this is not strictly the case in Ghana; commercial driving skills are gained by haphazard and informal methods, to a very large extent; these impact on driver attitude, behaviour and road safety.

Ghana’s litany of road safety problems would be incomplete without reference to road users’ beliefs in superstitious forces. Drivers, passengers and pedestrians alike have the tendency to associate road traffic mishaps to “religious beliefs, destiny and mystical practice”.

This world view permeates many developing countries, but more specifically in Africa. The ‘attitude and behaviour’ of many road users, primarily drivers, is shaped by this deterministic world. Road safety issues and personal responsibility and accountability are shoved into the hands of “impersonal forces outside one’s control. Driver training institutions in Ghana tend to focus on defensive driving techniques for skills acquisition and skills deployment to avert road traffic incidents.

The continuous application of such an approach would be the inadvertent creation of a ‘macho’ driving culture. Too many innocent lives are lost on Ghana’s road because drivers have not had effective training in the management of their emotions and the recognition of the road as a shared space: vulnerable road users have been killed or injured on pedestrian crossings!

A better and more considerate and proactive approach to reducing road traffic incidents would be training and coaching in cooperative and collaborative driving: a system of training that must include non-technical skills (or soft skills) in driver training programmes at the commencement of initial driver training and instructing.

An approach which would take cognisance of the principle of “love your neighbour as yourself”, granting that the principle is understood by the majority of the 70 per cent of Ghanaians who throng the churches on Sundays!

The key objective of this approach is to redress the negative attitudinal and behavioural tendencies of drivers (and other road users) and to inculcate in them positive and high-level thinking competences; a methodology that would be long-enduring to reduce road traffic crashes.

There are a number of techniques in this approach which are readily available and adaptable by individuals and training institutions to use. A Driver Risk Assessment (DRA) questionnaire, for example, would collect data about the driver’s history and behavioural risk factors, personal background (age, gender, and years of driving experience) and response to traffic situations. Driver Self-Assessment Programmes (DSAP) and Situation Awareness Tests (SATs) would be applicable for the determination of drivers’ physical and mental state and the degree to which a driver is aware of changes in traffic situations.

A driver’s honesty and integrity are critical in these matters if the interventions should work. Situation Awareness (SA) (or knowing what is going on around you) is one of the cognitive processes for building and maintaining awareness of situations or events. SA factors include perception, attention, concentration and memory. A combination of the deficits in these factors would account for many of the road traffic crashes.

Perceptual errors may be the consequence of distractions and work overload; attentional problems result in carelessness, inadequate planning and poor risk assessment. In effect, factors that impact on SA are stress, fatigue, alcohol, drugs (both prescribed and illegal) and inexperience.

Hence, a psychosocial approach to road safety training, testing and intervention and by implication, driver recruitment and deployment should emphasise the role human factors play in road traffic incidents. Road traffic crash statistics have generally recorded that some 80 to 90 per cent of road traffic incidents are the result human error.

It behoves transport operators and driver training institutions to embed psychological interventionist techniques in their driver recruitment and refresher training programmes.

These programmes would include both classroom and simulator training to develop knowledge and practice of situation awareness, decision-making and communication skills. Commercial vehicle drivers should be encouraged to attend regular refresher courses and counselling sessions.

Assessment of individual levels of situation awareness can be gleaned from psychometric profiling, driver stress inventory and driver coping questionnaires.

If both political and institutional wills were available, this approach should see the development of a real professional and competent driver population with a penchant for patience, tolerance and discipline necessary for sanity on the roads and a concomitant reduction in needless and pointless deaths and injuries.

Driver Behaviour Research, Education and Training

etse.ladzekpo@cranfield.ac.uk; etse.ladzekpo@ntlworld.com