Citation

Lewis J. Proc. Road Saf. Four Continents Conf. 2005; 13: 18p.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, Conference Sponsor)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The costs of traffic collisions and casualties in the developing world amounting to over $100 billion annually, exceeds the total aid received, with the national costs equivalent to 2 per cent of the gross domestic product. Developing countries can not afford the cost of crashes and with competing needs, the budgets available for road safety are often too small to affect change in the short and medium term. The ideal situation would be to reach a position where there is no need for public expenditure on road safety because people adopt safe behavior. In order to arrive at this position there must be considerable behavioral changes with the eventual aim of entrenching the habit of personal responsibility and restraint, thereby making road safety a self-sustaining social habit. Many road safety campaigns take the form of advertising, however, the effects of this approach is open to question and it is difficult to associate campaigns with casualty reduction. The degree to which the target audience makes a personal commitment to improved behavior as a result of the campaigns is not clear but it is known that changes to attitudes and risk can be made over time. For example, the overwhelming public support for the compulsory wearing of seatbelts today is far removed from the public resistance to their imposition in the 1970s. Similar attitudinal changes have come about with regard to smoking in public places where once it was considered unthinkable to ban smoking on an aircraft it is now unthinkable to allow it. The idea that it is possible to engage the public at a personal level in road safety has led to the development of the driver Voluntary Code of Conduct (VCoC). This project is the result of a partnership between Shell Ghana Limited the Global Road Safety Partnership (Ghana) and the National Road Safety Commission. Since 95% of road collisions are predicated to road user error, attitudinal change plays a critical role in the reduction of casualties. In the absence of adequate legislation and enforcement, the idea for a voluntary compact whereby drivers put themselves under a personal obligation to comply with safety practices, was conceived. This project was developed as a result of considering the costs and difficulties of implementing road safety schemes at a national level. It was recognized that for example, a single school safety campaign costing US$1000 would have to be multiplied 20,000 times in order to reach all pupils in Ghana, costs which are far beyond the reach of the current National road safety and education budgets. Drink Drive campaigns are also very expensive, however without the necessary police resources and enforcement capability, the risk of being apprehended is low and the deterrent is minimal. The same is true for speeding and other road traffic offenses.