Pedestrian safety - Global Road Safety Partnership

Prioritizing pedestrian safety interventions and preparing a plan of action
statistical authority can be used. Gathering all the data proposed usually requires
examination of multiple data sources.
If there are no official road safety statistics, or if official statistics do not cover the
minimum points fully or with adequate reliability, additional data collection such
as a hospital-based study (see Box 3.1) or a road safety audit (see Box 3.2) may be
considered. However, it is important to assess the costs of additional data collection
and the value added by the information obtained.
BOX 3.1: The Addis Ababa Hospital Injury Surveillance System
Ethiopia is an African country that has made significant
investment in improving its injury surveillance
capacity. Initial work on injury surveillance started
in 2000 with the support of WHO, followed by the
government’s efforts to strengthen the Traffic Police
Department’s road traffic injury data management
capacity and to expand data collection nationally.
The hospital injury surveillance system was
established in 2000. It was implemented in all six
government hospitals in the capital city, Addis Ababa.
At the start of the project, detailed data on all injury
cases were collected using a pre-defined data collection
form. Data collection has since been integrated
into the national health information system, and
data on injury cases are collected and recorded as
part of routine health statistics. The hospital injury
surveillance system collects the following data for
road traffic injury cases:
• age and sex of injured people;
• where the injury happened;
• date and time of injury;
• type of road user(s) involved;
• types of vehicles colliding with pedestrians;
• pre-hospital care received; and
• injury severity.
Traffic police data system strengthening efforts
started in Addis Ababa in 2002. Previously the traffic
police documented information about crashes using
a paper data collection form. The information was
then transferred to a log book for manual tabulation
and reporting. The strengthening effort, supported by
WHO, revised data collection and entry procedures
so that data are collected in the field using a predesigned
form and later entered into a computer
database for further analysis. In later years the government
expanded the system to six major regions in
the country. The traffic police data system captures
the following data for road traffic crashes:
• site and location of collision;
• vehicles/road users involved;
• number of people injured or killed at the scene;
• demographic data of casualties (for example,
name, age, sex, occupation);
• known factors contributing to the crash; and
• whether pre-hospital care was provided.
Data from these systems have been used by the
national road safety council to identify high risk areas
and to inform a policy development process around
interventions for pedestrians and other road users,
as well as other risk factors such distracted driving
and access to care for victims of road traffic crashes.
Source: 2,3.
© Kidist Bartolomeos
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