Our youth columnist from Uganda is back for another insight into all things road safety issues in Africa. His viewpoints give a peak into road safety trends and phenomenas around in the region. Check out his unique insights.

Roads even in 2019 continue to be the most dangerous place to be, particularly if you are in “Low and Middle Income Countries”:-a term I have personal reservations, but this is not about being personal or is it?

There is an overly increasing trend of animals killed on our roads. It doesn’t require you to have 3 PhDs to make this subtle observation. In what should be an outrage (or am I being radical real here), we neither know how many of these poor animals get killed annually nor do we know why and when they are killed. I have no bragging rights to claim (yet) to be an animal rights activist, but rightly so, every human should be concerned by the wellbeing of all animals since we all belong to the same Kingdom.

Eish, never mind, but seriously though…if bodies of dogs, cows, goats, cats, deers, donkeys, camels, toads (mention and delete as applicable in your home country) continue to flood our roads, shouldn’t that be an indicator that human lives in the same neighborhood are at risk? Let’s see…why would a dog be killed on the road? For a fact, I don’t think (you can agree or don’t as I’m not in a medically verified state of mind right now) that a dog hit’s a car! So, let me be a genius here for a second:-Dogs (and all animals) have ears, eyes and legs (or their equivalent), If a car hits one of them, the car has to be travelling at a higher speed than that of the animal! Yes, that’s right, Eureka! I’m the first person to discover this:-that’s right.

Luckily, I didn’t have to discover that if a car hits a body at speeds of more than 50km/hr, the chances of survival reduce by 60%:-this is why a 30km/hr speed is recommended legally in school and urban zones. WHO has already done hell lotta studies about this. In the same neighborhoods are children, young people, elderly, and persons with special needs:-whether a decision maker or a citizen, the sight of a dead animal killed on your road should be an indicator that, you are in a blackspot (I prefer dangerspot) and efforts should be put in place to increase visibility, speeding and distracted driving.

This is not a joke. In a JOHANNESBURG, Gauteng study by the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), More than 95% of respondents to the questionnaire survey believed that speed was the sole cause of roadkill. Compliance with park speed limits was determined to be high, with 72% of the 6981 vehicles monitored driving at or below speed limits.  To investigate the role of speed in determining rates of roadkill, the research team placed fake animals on the road and observed the behavior of 201 drivers. They found that of these drivers, almost 70% were considered to not be looking at the road further highlighting the risk of distracted driving.

Next time, you drive/cycle/walk past an animal killed on the road, think again.

Happy and safer valentines (for those who are interested and qualified in this department).

FOLLOW BRIAN ON TWITTER

FedEx is a partner and supporter of YOURS and through their work at FedEx Cares, have impacted hundreds of thousands of lives globally through a range of coorporate social resposibility activities.

CSR aims to ensure that companies conduct their business in a way that is ethical. This means taking account of their social, economic and environmental impact, and consideration of human rights. It can involve a range of activities such as: Working in partnership with local communities.

Back in 2012, Joel and small group of his contemporaries undertook the first ever YOURS Training of Facilitators workshop in Nairobi, Kenya. Joel went away and trained hundreds of his peers across Kenya through his work with the Kenya Red Cross. As he delved deeper into road safety, Joel connected his passion for road safety with his passion to express through poetry. He recently submitted a poem entitled ‘My brothers and sisters’ to be featured here on the YOURS website as a periodic feature. He continues his commitment to road safety.

Joel Njoroge

Facebook: Joe Kul Enz
LinkedIn: Joel Njoroge
Twitter: @_njorogejoe

READ ABOUT OUR KENYA TRAINING

Netflix has issued an injury warning about the viral fad spawned by its thriller. Over the December and early January period, Bird Box was a cultural hit, with thousands of viewer catching  ‘Netflix Original’. However, a Bird Box challenge has emerged with people blindfolding themselves and doing everyday tasks against warnings.

But there’s a more serious side effect to this meme than basic injuries. Disability researcher Arielle Silverman and her colleagues have shown that conducting “simulations” like blindfolding among the abled can actually lead them to greater negative bias towards blindness itself. After being blindfolded for a short stint, people feel it as a more debilitating condition than it really is; they underestimate the adaptive capability of blind people and end the experiment more likely to agree with statements such as: “If I were blind, I would do anything to get my sight back.”

This is because those participants focus on the beginning stages of the disability, the shock of it, rather than the adaptation process that comes with lived experience. For those who take the Bird Box Challenge, it’s the same story.

When it comes to road safety, there doesn’t even need to be a warning issued. We need all senses to navigate the road. One actually blindfolding yourself for the Bird Box challenge;

Viral challenges have become common over the last few years, with numerous ‘challenges’ seeing mostly young people try to one-up their friends. One of the original challenges, the ALS Ice bucket challenge saw more and more daring challenges unfold as people took riskier scenarios to make their challenge more interesting.

Some challenges are more reflective than harmful, like the recent #10YearChallenge where people post a picture from 2009 and 2019 to illustrate how much more snazzy, beatiful or downright cool they now are. In 2009, YOURS just began its operations!

We get it, these social media challenges can offer some light entertainment from a social media world that can sometimes be isolating. As always, we are highly aware that we don’t want to be party-poopers, we just ask you to be a bit more smarter than the people doing the Bird Box challenge and driving!

We are happy to share a guest blog from Raine Jenkins who writes about all things technology via Techiedoodlers.com. She is a passionate techie blogger and often writes thought provoking articles about the state of technology and society. She recently wrote a special guest blog for our website.

The resulting data is then sent to the service for analysis, resulting in a corresponding score that’s returned to the driver within minutes of the trip. In a nutshell, this and other similar sensor systems have been shown to be exceptionally effective at making young drivers adopt safer attitudes and habits while on the road.

Mark Milner of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) explained how the sensor systems influenced the drivers in the study: “What we heard from drivers in the first pilot is that many of them found themselves moderating their driving behaviour… They found that they were riskier drivers than they thought they were.” This is generally good news, especially considering that the study focused specifically on young drivers. In fact, during an earlier pilot, 40% of the 125 new and inexperienced drivers, reported improvements in their driving. And as Milner further explains, in this particular part of the study, the drivers “started to drive more slowly, (and) accelerate, brake and take corners more gently… They really wanted to get a good score.”

While the ICBC itself didn’t actually examine the data for improved driving, the driver feedback alone and their own satisfactory scores suggest a highly positive future for the ongoing study. The ICBC is already planning to follow this up with a study that involves up to 7,000 drivers with less than five years of actual driving experience. The study will look at how these new systems and devices can possibly reduce or even eliminate crashes altogether.

This of course is just one of the many examples of how smartphone and innovative technologies have been changing the course of the automotive and insurance industries for the better. Not surprisingly, these developments are not confined to just Canada. In Europe, Verizon Connect shows how personal coaching apps are now a feature of GPS tracking systems in the UK. Designed primarily for Lorries, today’s devices can help operators keep track of how their fleets are being driven. This allows fleet managers to effectively coach their employees on driving with efficiency and safety in mind, with the ultimate goal of decreasing the fleets’ fuel and maintenance costs as well as overall road safety. 

Across the globe there has also been a rise in apps that can track driving habits. This allows a third party to monitor drivers through a smart device. Some apps even reward drivers for good habits. For parents of young drivers, this has allowed them to monitor their children on the road and help them improve their driving habits. As the Vancouver study shows, technology is at the forefront of road safety. 

All of this is especially good news considering that globally speaking, there hasn’t been enough progress in terms of road safety. In December 2018, Youth for Road Safety tackled how traffic safety legislation, access to post-crash care, and vehicle standards haven’t yet improved fast enough to compensate for the rapid motorisation of transport in areas where local populations are also on the rise. However, with the aforementioned developments in mind, there’s definitely still hope for the future of road safety.

Road safety article contributed by Raine Jenkins for the sole use of youthforroadsafety.org