Urban Transport Strategy. Management in Developing Countries John A Cracknell, страница 54

c)  lack of police numbers and mobility to ensure comprehensive or timely recording of accidents;

d)  traffic police corruption which can result in informal arrangements with participants not to report accidents;

e)  weak insurance systems which results in compensation claims being settled privately and accidents under-reported;

f)  systematic bias against “less important” against groups - generally low income people etc; and lack of "follow - up" accident reporting (particularly on fatalities) from hospitals and emergency centres.

6.3.3.      It is not the function of the present “Traffic and Demand Management Review” to detail the actions necessary within traffic police forces to improve the gathering of accident data but it is noted that the resolution of these issues often requires far reaching changes in the traffic police including:

a)  police attitude to recognition of the importance of accurate, unbiased and complete data collection;

b)  police procedures for collection and processing data and training of police in those procedures;

c)  allocation of adequate funding to ensure that the traffic police have resources (staffing, training, field equipment to record accident data, office equipment to process data etc) to fulfil their accident reporting responsibilities; and

d)  active participation of the traffic police in the "Traffic Safety Committee" or equivalent (see box in para 6.1.4).

6.4         Accident data analysis

6.4.1.      The safety functions of the “traffic management agency” generally commence with retrieval of accident data from the traffic police.  The development of improvement actions is similar to the development of any traffic management scheme – problem identification, definition of remedial actions, design, implementation and monitoring. Even recognizing the weaknesses of data, there is often no systematic, periodic transfer of data from traffic police to the traffic management agency.  Data are frequently retrieved on an ad hoc basis to resolve particular accident problems, for example, due to political or public pressure at an obvious “blackspot” and thus only the most competent traffic management agencies have a methodical approach to accident analysis.  A methodical approach requires:

a)  the traffic management agency to obtain data on a regular basis.  It is necessary for the traffic management agency to establish close liaison with the traffic police and to institute procedures to ensure the periodic and systematic transfer of accident data;

b)  ideally, procedures to obtain data from emergency centres and hospitals on the outcome of serious accidents; very often if death is not instantaneous at an accident scene, the event does not enter the records in a correct manner; and

c)  procedures to be established within the traffic management agency to allow the accident data to be analysed to determine problematic sites, periods, groups, trends etc.  This analysis can be done manually with great effect (e.g. accident occurrence maps) but given that data needs to maintained and analysed over a length period (say 3 years) to obtain meaningful results, the analysis should be PC based.  Various propriety accident analysis software^[17] but any simple data base software package can be used.

6.5         Traffic management role in general prevention of road accidents and reduction of road accidents at specific sites

6.5.1.      Traffic management may be said to have two basic functions in the road safety area:

a)  Prevention -- promotion of standards, concepts and designs (and review of existing schemes-designs) to ensure that traffic schemes and roads operate safely and in particular, that vulnerable road user groups are protected; and