National Road Safety Policy of 2009 - Uwaba.or.tz

• Non-recognition of non-motorized transport is one of the
major issues causing conflicts to motor vehicle and nonmotorized
transport movements. This has resulted in
non-provision of necessary non-motorized facilities such
as walkways, bicycle ways, zebra crossings, footbridges,
signs and markings; the end result has been sharing of
the road space with motorized transport and haphazard
crossing of streets / roads by pedestrians leading to
traffic conflicts and crashes;
• Many road project designs do not have adequate in-built
road safety parameters or concepts, and even those
that have, the designs are not implemented because
they were not demand-driven, they are not adequately
participatory in their preparation and they are unrelated
to the malady they purport to cure;
• The road infrastructure is improved every year. However,
there are serious road safety problems along the main
roads in both rural and built-up areas. The design of
new and rehabilitated roads through built-up areas does
not provide roads which are safe;
• The road users found most vulnerable from a road safety
point of view are the pedestrians and motorized and nonmotorized
two wheelers. Special provisions for people on
foot include regulations for pedestrian crossings, which
give legal precedence to pedestrians. However, it is the
pedestrians seeking to protect their lives, who almost
invariably give way to motor vehicles;
• In most cases, the planning process does not give
sufficient consideration to developing a functional
hierarchy of roads in built-up areas. Consequently,
through traffic has to mix with local access traffic and
pedestrians, and this results in safety problems;
• In urban centres congestion of vehicles is rampant
due to inappropriate urban transport planning policies
which manifest into poor traffic management. The
situation is exacerbated by factors like non-functioning
of traffic signals at intersections due to various reasons,
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