by mse47 | Nov 27, 2023 | Dashboard
Crash injuries are ranked as the eighth leading cause of global mortality across all age groups and this is predicted to climb to seventh by 2030. Lebanon, in particular, stands out with a safety record deemed “among the worst globally” by the World Bank. According to 2020 data from the World Health Organization (WHO), Lebanon holds the 89th position in global safety rankings.
Due to the importance of the above-stated issue, we analyze the primary causes of road crashes, focusing on fatalities and the most affected population, wrapping up with recommendations for authorities.
To start with, the number of crashes in Lebanon followed an upward trend until it reached its peak in 2019. After the economic crisis in Lebanon and the increase in gasoline prices in the country, the number of crashes decreased and started following a downward trend till today. Although these numbers seem promising, when examining the death rate / 100 crashes, we notice that it has been following an upward trend since 2019. This suggests that while the overall number of accidents in Lebanon has decreased compared to four years ago, the severity of these accidents has escalated.
Now we are interested in checking the causes behind crashes with fatalities to understand what is happening. The figure below shows that there are two main causes of these crashes:
1- Driver not abiding by the speed limit
2- Pedestrian not abiding by crossing the street rules
As the above figure shows, pedestrians not abiding by crossing the street rules has become the top cause leading to crashes with fatalities.
Now let’s keep this in mind and check for “blackspots” or spots with high crashes leading to fatalities to understand what is happening.
The figures below show that:
1- There are several blackspots in Lebanon, 5 of which are common findings with ISF Lebanon. After checking all 5 locations, we found out that all have a structure similar to highways.
2- The percentage of pedestrian fatalities among children reaches its peak between 2 PM and 4 PM – end of school hours time.
Now, we need to check what is the most vulnerable population (that has the highest fatality rate) and what is the main cause of such crashes. We do so by focusing on two of the blackspot locations: Saida (الكورنيش البحري) and Carantina (فوروم دو بيروت).
When drilling down into the two blackspots, we realize the following:
1- Pedestrians constitute at least 50% of the fatalities.
2- At least 40% of ‘Cause of Crash’ is: Pedestrian not abiding by street crossing rules, a cause discussed earlier above.
But here a question arises: Does this sound as if we are over-blaming pedestrians? What rules are we talking about? Does the street situation in Lebanon, facilitate crossing the streets for pedestrians? As we all know, in most cases, the answer is no, we don’t. Then, what could be done?
Since we all know the economic situation in Lebanon, we are here to offer low-budget approaches that are applied in other countries and have proved their efficiency:
1- Turn on traffic lights, at least those that are on junctions and cross points. This could be done in collaboration with civil society and NGOs that would be pleased to help by providing electricity supply through their private generators or solar stations; some initiatives have already been done.
2- Paint specific locations where pedestrians need to cross roads by Zebra Crossing in order to signal for cars to slow down and pay more attention to pedestrians.
3- When it comes to needed areas around schools, add school warning signs. Traffic police could also help during out-of-school hours on certain roads.
The figures below provide examples of what has been discussed earlier.
In addition to the above-stated on-ground actions, spreading awareness is a key action that could be performed at different levels targeting different age groups, starting from intensifying road safety topic in school programs at early age stages, reaching to broadcasting awareness campaigns that target older age groups.
Acknowledgement:
All data used for this blogpost is retreived directly from ISF who has thankfully collaborated and provided the data needed covering years 2016 – 2023.
by raw05 | Nov 29, 2022 | Team Project
ALERT TODAY, ALIVE TOMORROW
Contributors: Bashar Salha, Mohamad Kheir El Daouk, Rani Abu Dehn, Raoul El Khazen, Rima Wehbe.
Road Safety: Background Information
The World Health Organization estimates that around 1.3 million people die and that 30 to 50 million are injured each year due to road crashes. Despite having road safety laws instituted in almost every country, road accidents are still the leading cause of death for young people aged 5-29 years old.
In Lebanon, this problem is felt by most because of the chaotic nature of our roads. Anyone who has experienced being a passenger or a driver in Lebanon is aware of the bumpy roads, the absent traffic lights, the disregard for speed limits and safety regulations, the lack of protection for walking pedestrians, the dark tunnels and the unlit autoroutes in the night. According to the World Bank, the traffic and roads situation in Lebanon is now “amongst the worst globally” whereby it has become much more dangerous than it previously was following the start of the economic crisis in 2019.
We believe that the deteriorating status of Lebanon’s economic and social development will continue to aggravate the issue of unsafe roads and unsafe driving. So, our aim for this study is to firstly showcase to the fullest extent the details of this problem through the use of primary and secondary data sources and secondly to design an impactful solution which can be validated by relevant stakeholders.
Problem Clarification
Below is our linked interactive dashboard which showcases the details of the problem visually.
Our overall findings and comments can be summarized as follows:
1. The youth is most prone to having accidents and dying in these accidents. This is from the fact that people who are aged from 15 till 29 constituted the largest share of deaths from accidents.
2. On a geographical level, we observed that the accidents are majorly happening in the caza of Mount Lebanon and Beirut. Moreover, the bulk of the deaths are happening in the district of Baabda and Metn.
3. Collisions involving pedestrians are the most dangerous.
4. On average, people make accidents in the spring and summer breaks. From a time perspective, these accidents are evident to increase in the evening, especially on weekends.
5. On average, for 86% of all accidents, the driver is at fault. In 13% of the crashes, the pedastrian is at fault. Also, the major reason behind accidents is overspeeding, then we have reasons related to drivers and pedastirans not following road safety regulation.
The comparison between the years of 2014 and 2015 shows the impact of instituting a new law and enforcing it. As shown in the introductory dashboard, Law 243, released in April 2015, greatly influenced the traffic situation and decreased the numbers of accidents and casualties to about half the previous values.
Proposed Solution(s)
We propose four short-term solutions that can be implemented in a close period of time and two long-term solutions which require governmental and organizational cooperation and attention.
Our Short-Term Solutions:
1. Design and launch awareness campaigns for the young people who are 15 years old or more and will be eligible to drive, especially for the 15—29 age bracket. These awareness campaigns must be designed specifically to grab the attention of the young adults and to make them sensitive to the dangers of road crashes.
2. Place reflective signs on highways, dark mountain roads and tunnels. These reflective signs are cost efficient yet effective in guiding the driver in dark places.
3. Make the traffic lights solar powered. Since Lebanon has a limited budged, these traffic lights must be placed by according to priority. For instance, we must first set them on roundabouts and intersections. These places are more prone to traffic and illegal driving and overtaking.
4. Restructure the current penalty system for road violations. These penalties must follow the current economic and foreign exchange rate conditions in order to represent an actual threat to illegal drivers.
Our Long-Term Solutions:
1. Obliging citizens with theoretical studies and technical training related to cars. This is achieved by creating a driving school which ensures that drivers are equipped which adequate driving skills and safety knowledge.
2. Creating and modifying laws to penalize people who violate road safety measures. These laws can start by a point-based driving license, where drivers will lose points every time, they violate the law. After losing all these points, the authority is ought to retract the driving license.
Final Remarks
It is imperative that we combat this problem and that we share our findings with relevant stakeholders such as the youth, the ISF and the concerned NGOs in order to encourage this community to stay committed in their effort to rectify the Lebanese traffic issue. Hence, we have decided to email ISF representative General Imad Osman with a link to our dashboard which we will also send back to KunHadi representative Ms. Lina Gebrane who sat with us to validate our ideas.
Finally, we wish to stress on the importance of small actions that we as pedestrians and drivers can take to make our experience on the road less chaotic and stressful, being alert today means being alive tomorrow.
