ADB Transport Forum 2014
Urban Road Safety Workshop
18-19 September 2014, 14:00-17:30
B. Urban Road Safety
Day 1
The keynote on unique challenges of
urban road safety was given by Ben Welle (Senior Associate, Health and Road
Safety, World Resources Institute). The challenges mentioned include: (a) very
dense and mixed traffic prominent in developing cities, and (b) who is in
charge of road safety or the institutional set-up. Recommendations on how to
improve urban road safety are: (a) improving basic design of streets; (b)
making pedestrians safer; (c) making cyclists safer; (d) reducing and
restricting vehicle travel (e.g. Electronic Road Pricing in Singapore); (e)
moving people through mass transport; and (f) conducting road safety audits for
cities. In conclusion, safety determines the quality of life.
Jaehoon Sul (Senior Research Fellow,
Department of Transport Safety and Highway Research, Korea Transport Institute)
presented a systematic approach to urban road safety based on Korea’s Transport
Safety Action Plan. Their road safety management and transportation safety
planning systems were very comprehensive and covered the following safety
aspects: road safety policy, safety zone program, school zones and child
accidents, drunken driving, speeding, seat-belt wearing, safety education, and
emergency rescue.
M.A.N. Siddique (Secretary, Roads
Division, Ministry of Communications, Bangladesh) discussed success stories and
challenges in urban road safety in Bangladesh.
For the group work, participants were
organized into three groups and asked to brainstorm on how to develop the right
policy mix in their countries. Concrete priority policies/measures were
developed.
Day 2
Road safety audit and how it is done
in an urban setting was discussed by Greg Smith. Some examples of urban road
safety audits in the PRC and Korea were also presented.
Jae Hoon Sul (KOTI) emphasized the
importance of focusing on vulnerable road users – children in Korea. Through
research, government policies and initiatives, Korea’s road safety measures for
children resulted to 95% reduction of child traffic fatalities.
The initial plan to do a walk-about of the
vicinity of ADB was cancelled due to bad weather. Instead, a video clip of
road-vehicle-people interaction taken in Indonesia was shown and participants
were asked to give recommendations to improve road safety.
