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

given time on a journey; also concentrates on mobility objective
rather than safety objectives. Societal problem is best measured
by the number of deaths per head of population while the personnel
problem can be measured in terms of death rate per vehicle or per
vehicle-km. Further, it is a fact the road trauma is a consequence of
mobility caused by a chain of events eminating from errors within
a road transport system or is one the components i.e, the road
environment, the vehicle or road user particularly the driver when
interacting with other components within the system; However
police records suggest that personnel behaviour of road users
are the dominant causes of accident i.e. short falls in human
behaviour and particularly driver is the main cause of road
crashes in Tanzania e.g. in the year 2006, in appropriate human
behaviour accounted for 80% of 17,039 road crashes reported to
the police these short falls can be associated to Low Level of
Education, (adult literacy), low per capital in come and low
value attached to personnel human life which is characterised
by a smaller average life span. Furthermore majority of accident
victims are pedestrians and bus passengers of the low income
group and young man and women below the age of 45 years. One
inference to be drawn from this observation is that the system
of driver education, training and certification and enforcement of
traffic rules and regulations are areas which used to be overhauled
equally with priority directed on reducing severity rather than
frequency of accident.
Gender and Age Indicators
For the year 2007, of the number of persons who died, 78% were
male and 22% were female (ratio of 3.55:1) and of the number of
persons who were injured, 72% were male and 28% were female
(ratio of 2.52:1). An examination of the gender disparity in the
Traffic Police Report revealed that males are 3.55 times more likely
than females to be killed in a motor vehicle crash and that males
are 2.52 times more likely than females to be injured in a motor
vehicle crash.
The age cohort most affected was 25 – 29 years with 21% injured.
Special attention should also be given to children who, between the
ages of 0 – 19, make up one-fifth of pedestrian fatalities. The lack
of green areas and footways in areas where some children live, the
inadequacy of the public transportation system, the high level of
motorization and the reduced tendency of the motoring public to
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