Traffic Safety and Sustainable Transport Systems in Developing Countries

Abstract

Road safety problems and the efficiency of transport systems are influenced by factors outside the context of the infrastructure itself. This acknowledgement is of great importance when transferring transport systems and road safety policies developed in high-income countries to low-income countries. Policies and countermeasures that have proven to be effective in the mitigation of road safety problems in developed countries may not fit well with the safety needs in settings where road traffic is commonly characterized by a higher degree of heterogeneity. Such characteristic makes underlying concepts of traffic flows theory applied in high-income countries questionable when applied to low-income countries given that they are designed for homogeneous traffic flows. Because they do not account for such varying dynamic and static characteristics of transport modes they fail in delivering adequate results when applied to road environments characterized by heterogeneous traffic. Other important issues are the differences in the mobility habits of the population, the role and the quality of the public transport systems and its characteristics. The objective of this paper is to provide a better understanding on how all these factors correlate and influence the performance and safety of the transport systems and their importance in the development of infrastructures and transport policies that better fit the mobility patterns and safety needs of developing societies. 