Road Safety Education in the Context of the Sustainable Development of Society: The Romanian Case

Commercial motorcyclists and road safety measures compliance. A case study of Dodoma city, central Tanzania

Objective

Road traffic accidents have been reported to contribute a greater proportion of deaths. Motorcyclists are among the high-risk group within road users to succumb to road traffic accidents. Road traffic accidents reflect the co-occurrence of multiple causes that involve road infrastructure, vehicle, and people. Understanding the level of compliance with road safety measures and their associated factors among commercial motorcyclists is important approach in the steps towards road traffic accident prevention.

Study design

A cross-sectional study of commercial motorcyclists from two districts in Dodoma region was conducted in 2020.

Methods

Multistage sampling method was used to recruit motorcyclists from registered parking stations. At first stage, purposive sampling was used to select the two districts, while in the second stage simple random sampling by lottery method was employed in the selection of wards and parking stations. Descriptive and Chi-square test analyses determined the compliance level. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the associated factors.

Results

A total of 378 male commercial motorcyclists participated in the study. Majority (87.8%) were within the age range of 18-29 years. A significant proportion of participants (61.9%) had adequate knowledge and 59.5% showed positive attitude towards road safety measures. Only 39.7% reported to have good level of compliance with road safety measures. Married motorcyclists and those with good road safety practice regarding road safety measures were more likely to comply with road safety measures than their counterpart.

Conclusion

Good road safety practices and marital status were predictors of good compliance with road safety measures. Coordinated approaches, including continuing provision of road safety education and enforcement of road safety measures are needed to control the way motorcyclist behave on the road.

Stampede Prevention Design of Primary School Buildings in China: A Sustainable Built Environment Perspective

In China, crowd stampede accidents usually take place within crowded areas in middle and primary schools. The crowd stampede risk is particularly related to the architectural design such as the staircase design, the layout of crowded places, obstacles, etc. Through the investigation of building design in several primary schools, the relationship between the sustainable layout of crowded places (e.g., toilets, canteens, playgrounds, staircases) and the crowd stampede risk of students are introduced via agent-based simulations. In particular, different experimental scenarios are conducted on stairs in the primary buildings. The evacuation processes are recorded by video camera and spatial stepping characteristics (e.g., foot clearance, step length, mass center, the distance between the mass center and ankle, and etc.) are extracted from the video. Dynamic steady ability is investigated by adopting the margin of stability, quantified by the instantaneous difference between the edge of the base of support and extrapolated vertical projection of the mass center. Based on the sustainable built environment principles and historical data of students, this paper focuses on an in-depth analysis of the staircase design aiming at preventing the crowd stampede risk.