Determining prominent factors across system hierarchies to improve road safety in LMICs: A case study of Bangladesh

Abstract

Road traffic collisions have become a major safety concern in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Traditional collision investigation methods usually identify lower system-level factors whereas systems-based sociotechnical approaches address higher system-level factors contributing to crashes. Accimap, one of the most popular systems-based collision analysis method has been used in this study to analyze eight road collisions varying in terms of collision type, severity, and surroundings in Bangladesh, a low-income country, and address both the higher and lower system-level factors. The inter-connected factors contributing to each collision are mapped according to eight system levels starting from environment and equipment to international committees level, and aggregated to create a generic Accimap having 175 unique factors. Further, network analysis metrics i.e., indegree centrality, outdegree centrality, betweenness centrality, sociometric status, clique census, and global efficiency of network have been evaluated to find out the prominent contributory factors. The results from combining Accimap and network analysis show that improperly designed roads, risky overtaking, and delayed emergency response at the lower system levels have prominent contribution to collisions. Additionally, higher system-level factors such as lack of supervision or monitoring, inefficient fund distribution, lack of enforcement, insufficient infrastructures, and lack of planning play a vital role in the causation of road traffic collisions. So, based on the combined approach, improving road infrastructure, enhancing law enforcement, increasing supervision and monitoring, educating drivers, and properly planned fund distribution are identified as the leverage points which can be utilized by the road safety stakeholders to build a safer road system.