Bad roads are good
EDITOR—Putting the economic benefits of a good road network aside, I strongly believe that bad roads are, indeed, good. There is a rather disheartening school of thought that the poor condition of parts of our road network is leading to high rates of accidents.
EDITOR—Putting the economic benefits of a good road network aside, I strongly believe that bad roads are, indeed, good. There is a rather disheartening school of thought that the poor condition of parts of our road network is leading to high rates of accidents.
Unfortunately, better roads will increase accidents. I loathe the so-called transport specialists (and journalists) who propose methods applied to road networks in the Western World, suggesting that the same should be applied here. Widening roads, dual carriageways and removal of accident hot spots will not stop accidents, but increase them.
There is no quick win short-term solution to our accident situation. Accidents are random events with various causation factors. Until you get to the root cause, then you cannot stop or prevent the severity of a particular accident.
Based on my highway engineering and road safety experience both in Uganda and in the Western World, one factor which is a constant in all accidents is the victim or road-users (i.e driver, pedestrian or cyclist).
Until such a time when the road-user acknowledges or controls his actions with safety in mind, accidents will continue to occur. Bad roads are good because they control the behaviour of the road-user which eventually leads him to think in terms of road safety.
Andrew Naimanye
andrew.naimanye@
waterman-boreham.com
Unfortunately, better roads will increase accidents. I loathe the so-called transport specialists (and journalists) who propose methods applied to road networks in the Western World, suggesting that the same should be applied here. Widening roads, dual carriageways and removal of accident hot spots will not stop accidents, but increase them.
There is no quick win short-term solution to our accident situation. Accidents are random events with various causation factors. Until you get to the root cause, then you cannot stop or prevent the severity of a particular accident.
Based on my highway engineering and road safety experience both in Uganda and in the Western World, one factor which is a constant in all accidents is the victim or road-users (i.e driver, pedestrian or cyclist).
Until such a time when the road-user acknowledges or controls his actions with safety in mind, accidents will continue to occur. Bad roads are good because they control the behaviour of the road-user which eventually leads him to think in terms of road safety.
Andrew Naimanye
andrew.naimanye@
waterman-boreham.com