An Evaluation of the "Belia Di Jalan Raya" Road Safety Programme

In November 1996, a road safety programme known as the Belia di Jalan Raya road safety programme was carried out in Hulu Langat. The main objective of this programme was to reduce traffic accidents and injuries, especially among the motorcyclists.This thesis presents the impact of the one year safety programme in the Hulu Langat district. It provides an integrated approach to address accident problems by the enhancement of traffic enforcement, education and public information. The accident data were collected 23 months before and 12 months after the programme, in two comparison locations, Hulu Langat and Shah Alam. Shah Alam was used as a matched-pair control in this analysis. The Before and After analysis and the Box-Jenkins time series modeling technique were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the safety programme. Using the Before and After Chi-square test, it was found that the proportion of accidents in these two districts are Significantly different. This implies that the safety programme has a Significant effect on the reduction in the number of accidents, injuries and fatalities in Hulu Langat. The Box-Jenkins Time Series analysiS indicates an average reduction of 57 accidents, 8 hospitalized non-motorcyclist casualties, 15 non-motorcyclist fatalities, 18 hospitalized motorcyclists, 3 motorcyclist deaths, 3 young hospitalized non-motorcyclist casualties and 1 fatal motorcyclist in every month during the study period. In contrast, there had been an average increase in accidents and casualties in the comparison district, Shah Alam. The Survival Analysis shows that there was a significant improvement in overall traffic safety status in Hulu Langat after the implementation of the safety programme. In contrast, changes in traffic safety status in the comparison location, Shah Alam, did not resemble improvement in Hulu Langat in direction and magnitude

Economic growth means more road injuries in less developed countries, but fewer in those which are highly developed

Many studies have shown that there is a u-shaped relationship between road deaths and economic growth, with fatalities increasing and then decreasing as economic growth rises. In new research, Law Teik Hua finds that this relationship also holds for non-fatal road injuries in developed countries, but not in countries which are developing. He writes that an increasingly urban population, more road vehicles, and a greater number of elderly people were all likely to decrease the number of road injuries in developed countries, but do the opposite in developing countries

Factors associated with the relationship between non-fatal road injuries and economic growth

This study reports the results of an empirical analysis of the Kuznets curve relationship between non-fatal road injuries and per-capita income. This relationship indicates that the number of road deaths increases with increasing per-capita income at lower income levels, but decreases once it has exceeded a threshold level. We apply a fixed effects negative binomial regression analysis on a panel of 90 countries over the period of 1963–2009. Results indicated evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and non-fatal road injuries for both less developed and highly developed countries. Results also indicated that the turning point is higher in less developed countries than in higher developed countries. The evidence presented in this study suggests that improvements in road infrastructure, the quality of regulatory institutions, and increase in the use of safer transport modes will help reduce non-fatal road injuries

The direct and indirect effects of corruption on motor vehicle crash deaths.

Recent empirical research has found that there is an inverted U-shaped or Kuznets relationship between income and motor vehicle crash (MVC) deaths, such that MVC deaths increase as national income increases and decrease after reaching a critical level. Corruption has been identified as one of the underlying factors that could affect this relationship, primarily by undermining institutional development and effective enforcement schemes. The total effect of corruption can be decomposed into two components, a direct and an indirect effect. The direct effect measures the immediate impact of corruption on MVC deaths by undermining effective enforcement and regulations, while the indirect effect captures the impact of corruption on hindering increases in per capita income and the consequent impact of reduced income on MVC deaths. By influencing economic growth, corruption can lead to an increase or decrease in MVC deaths depending on the income level. Using data from 60 countries between 1982 and 2003, these effects are estimated using linear panel and fixed effects negative binomial models. The estimation results suggest that corruption has different direct effects for less developed and highly developed countries. It has a negative (decreasing) effect on MVC deaths for less developed countries and a positive (increasing) effect on MVC deaths for highly developed countries. For highly developed countries, the total effect is positive at lower per capita income levels, but decreases with per capita income and becomes negative at per capita income levels of about US$ 38,248. For less developed countries, the total effect is negative within the sample range and decreases with increased per capita income. In summary, the results of this study suggest that reduction of corruption is likely a necessary condition to effectively tackle road safety problems

Factors Associated with the Enactment of Safety Belt and Motorcycle Helmet Laws.

It has been shown that road safety laws, such as motorcycle helmet and safety belt laws, have a significant effect in reducing road fatalities. Although an expanding body of literature has documented the effects of these laws on road safety, it remains unclear which factors influence the likelihood that these laws are enacted. This study attempts to identify the factors that influence the decision to enact safety belt and motorcycle helmet laws. Using panel data from 31 countries between 1963 and 2002, our results reveal that increased democracy, education level, per capita income, political stability, and more equitable income distribution within a country are associated with the enactment of road safety laws

Impact of the effect of economic crisis and the targeted motorcycle safety programme on motorcycle-related accidents, injuries and fatalities in Malaysia

In 1997, a Motorcycle Safety Programme (MSP) was introduced to address the motorcycle-related accident problem. The MSP was specifically targeted at motorcyclists. In addition to the MSP, the recent economic recession has significantly contributed to a reduction of traffic-related incidents. This paper examines the effects of the recent economic crisis and the MSP on motorcycle-related accidents, casualties and fatalities in Malaysia. The autocorrelation integrated moving average model with transfer function was used to evaluate the overall effects of the interventions. The variables used in developing the model were gross domestic product and MSPs. The analysis found a 25% reduction in the number of motorcycle-related accidents, a 27% reduction in motorcycle casualties and a 38% reduction in motorcycle fatalities after the implementation of MSP. Findings indicate that the MSP has been one of the effective measures in reducing motorcycle safety problems in Malaysia. Apart from that, the performance of the country's economy was also found to be significant in explaining the number of motorcycle-related accidents, casualties and fatalities in Malaysia

Identification of traffic and roadway variables affecting safe motorcycling along urban roads

In Malaysia, motorcycles represented 45% of all registered vehicles. Alarmingly, motorcyclists comprise 65% of total road deaths. One major reason being that these vulnerable road users get entangled with other mixed vehicles. It is appreciated that roadway design guidelines are based on the characteristics of drivers/automobiles and not riders/motorcycles. Thus, motorcyclists are expected to occupy the dynamically changing space that is available along the roadway. An effective engineering measure to tackle motorcycle safety problems in mixed traffic conditions would be to segregate the motorcycles exclusively. However, this measure is not appropriate for urban roads. One practical approach to address motorcycling safety along urban roads is to identify the traffic and road environment variables that affects safe motorcycling. This list of variables can be used to check the safe motorcycling status along segments of urban roads. The variables relating to bicyclist’s perception on the roadway segments were adopted for the variables affecting motorcycling safety along urban roads. To corroborate the adopted variables factors with the actual perception of motorcyclist, the questionnaires related to the variables affecting safe motorcycling were responded by 137 motorcyclists. The variables were identified to be pavement condition, on-street parking, traffic volume, divided/undivided roadway, left-side kerb clearance, lane width, and travelling speed. To further understand these seven variables from the aspect of motorcyclist perceptions, 14 short clips were presented to 483 motorcyclists who rated each clip based on their perception of safe motorcycling. Results found that the odds of feeling unsafe riding on bad pavement is 61.5 times greater than the odds of riding on good pavement. The odds of unsafe motorcycling along roads with on-street parking is 43.2 times higher than without on- street parking. Overall, it infers that the maintenance of road pavement conditions must be of high priority to the local authorities followed by issues of on-street parking along urban links

Development of composite road environment safety index

This study aims to develop a road safety index that combines selected road environmental characteristics in Malaysia. Firstly, 14 indicators that generally portray the Malaysian road environments were selected. Then, the final list of specific indicators for each road network was developed. The indicators were derived based on the specific criteria such as the objectives, method of measurement, quality, and expected outcomes of the indicators that may improve the overall road safety of the Malaysian trunk roads. The Malaysian Federal Road 12 was selected as the study area to assess the applicability of the theory. By employing the principal component analysis, four components were obtained and from the statistical weightage of the indicator in each component, the composite indexes were calculated. The results showed that the sections with low number of reported crashes were not necessarily safe for road users. Instead, poor road environment conditions may be highly hazardous to road users. The presence of heavy vehicles and motorcycles was found to be the main risk factor of crash occurrences on this road. Overall, the crash data may be supplemented with another proactive method in order to get a broader picture of the poor road sections

Identification of hazardous road sections: crash data versus composite index method

In current road safety practices, the identification of hazardous road sections are normally based on crash data. However, the information provided by crash data may not be adequate to explain the causal factors that lead to a crash. Therefore, a different kind of road safety indicator that can extensively describe the actual road environment problems of a road section is considered essential. This paper considered fourteen road environment indicators based on their abilities to portray current road environment conditions and their potential towards road crash incidence. These indicators were collected using naturalistic driving technique within the 80-km road length connecting Kuantan and Maran town in the state of Pahang, Malaysia in which the composite road environment risk index was finally developed. This composite road environment risk index is found to be a useful proactive method to identify the potential problematic road sections that require urgent road improvement works as compared to the reactive crash data analysis method

Profiled composite slab strength determination method

The purpose of this article is to develop a new numerical approach for determining the strength capacity of a profiled composite slab (PCS) devoid of the current challenges of expensive and complex laboratory procedure required for establishing its longitudinal shear capacity. The new Failure Test Load (FTL) methodology is from a reliability-based evaluation of PCS load capacity design with longitudinal shear estimation under slope-intercept (m-k) method. The limit-state capacity development is through consideration of the experimental FTL value as the maximum material strength, and design load equivalent estimation using the shear capacity computation. This facilitates the complex strength verification of PDCS in a more simplified form that is capable of predicting FTL value, which will aid in determining the longitudinal shear of profiled deck composite slab with ease. The developed strength determination effectively performs well in mimicking the probabilistic deck performance and composite slab strength determination. The strength test performance between the developed scheme and the experiment-based test results indicates high similarity, demonstrating the viability of the proposed strength determination methodology