2nd African Road Safety Assembly

27 February 2007

Delegates at the 2nd African Road Safety Assembly and Traffic Expo held recently in Nigeria advised road safety designers and engineers to always consider the culture of the people of the host community when designing and constructing roads.

Other recommendations at the workshop include the following:

• African governments should formulate policies that promote the safety of vulnerable road users and should consult extensively with stakeholders before formulating the policies.
• A lot of vulnerable road users get knocked down because they were not seen by drivers, vrus should be aggressively educated on the need to adopt the “See me” style of dressing.
• Teaching of road safety in schools in African countries should be expedited and aggressively pursued.
• Cyclists and their passengers should be mandated to use reflective materials – e.g reflective arm bands, reflective jackets and helmets to be conspicuous on the roadways at all times, particularly at night.
• Since human behavior is the biggest factor that causes traffic fatalities, road safety education and awareness programs for drivers and vulnerable road users should be intensified.
• Road safety regulatory agencies and the law enforcement agencies should strengthen law enforcement to discourage those who have tendency to err.
• African countries should improve in data gathering on victims of traffic fatalities because most statistics on crashes, injuries and deaths at the moment are not reliable. Most of them are mere conjectures and assumptions.

Eight papers were delivered at the Assembly by seasoned road safety professionals.

While declaring the workshop closed, Mr. Olanrewaju the Executive Director of Safety Alliance announced that 3rd African Road Safety Assembly with the theme “ Enhancing Roadway Safety in Africa through the Principle and Practice of Road Safety Audit” which will take place in Daaresalam, Tanzania  from November 15 -16 2007 will be bigger and better than the previous editions. www.safetyalliance-events.org