Abstract:
School pedestrian death due to road accidents is one of the major concerns in a developing country like Bangladesh. According to WHO, in developing countries about 30 to 40% children account for road traffic deaths. In Bangladesh child pedestrian involvement in road traffic casualties are around 24 percent, while 78 percent of them turns into fatalities. Most of them are school child pedestrian and the dominant age group is 6-16 years. It is very tragic to see such deaths of those children and there is an urgent need to protect them by taking appropriate measures. Most of the school pedestrian collisions occur while crossing the road mostly at uncontrolled roadway sections near school zones. Basically uncontrolled roadway sections are unmarked and having no pedestrian road crossing facilities like overpass, underpass, pedestrian refuge etc. Even no school zone marking and signing are present at times. These roadway deficiencies are clearly the major contributor to pedestrian safety hazards. All of these parameters were identified in this research work for school pedestrian safety. Pedestrian demographic characteristics data, traffic volume and speed data were collected from an uncontrolled roadway sections located near a school zone at Tongi, College Gate. Almost 35% of its total students along with their parents have to cross that uncontrolled roadway section during school period. Pedestrian crossing pattern behaviors were observed including their age and gender. Besides pedestrian crossing speed, gap size, waiting time, collisions rate, period and severity were also collected. The main objective of this paper is to identify the key factors which contribute to be occurrence of pedestrian injuries and fatalities that result from road crashes. The findings of this study particularly show the significance of the need for roadway infrastructure improvements on this site including raising public awareness for pedestrian safety, school children in particular.
Contributors: Rokon A, Hoque M M, Ahamed F, Alam R, Sarkar S.
Link(s) for the Paper: Journal Website | ResearchGate