Road Safety a Key Driver in Enhancing Urban Environments

Related: Making our Road Transport Safer for Children

barrysays

Last week saw the Third UN Global Road Safety Week (4-10 May 2015), which highlighted the plight of children on the world’s roads and inspired action to better ensure their safety through hundreds of events hosted by governments, international agencies, civil society organizations, and private companies. I acted as moderator for the forum in Hong Kong entitled “Making our Road Transport Safer for Children” organised by Community for Road Safety, CIPRA and Designing Hong Kong. There were some surprising lessons to be learnt.

Image - who.int

Around 186,300 children under 18 years old [1] die from road traffic crashes annually, that’s more than 500 children every day whilst rates of road traffic death are three times higher in developing countries than in developed countries.[2]For developing countries in a phase of rapid motorization, as is the case in China today, roads are often built without due consideration for the changing times we live in or for the communities they have to pass through.

Trend of fatal and serious accidents Hong Kong (1953-2013)
Image - td.gov.hk

Source - gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2013

In Hong Kong, whilst the roads have been absorbing new private vehicles at the alarming rate of over 4.6% per annum for the last decade,[3] the trend of critical and fatal road traffic accidents has been decreasing over the same period.[4] In 2014 Hong Kong had the lowest number of fatal accidents since 1955.[5] The Highways and Transport Departments are sure to want to pat themselves on the back for this, however it’s not immediately clear why the safety statistics are improving and it’s unfortunately not all good news for the pedestrians.

The Road Safety Council formulates road safety strategies in Hong Kong, working to reduce the number of traffic accidents in the territory. Their five-pronged approach combines EDUCATION, ENGINEERING, ENFORCEMENT, ENCOURAGEMENT AND EVALUATION.[6] Incremental efforts over the years in all these areas can surely be seen to be baring fruit, in much the same way as can be seen in Western Europe over the same period. In UK for example, during 2013, 1,713 people were killed in road accidents reported to the police, the lowest number on record, and half as many as in year 2000, whilst 21,657 people were seriously injured, down 43 % from 2000.[7]

Image- quora.com

In the US deaths in car crashes have fallen by about a quarter in the last decade, but it appears clear that it is the safety features built into the latest vehicle models that has have powered the continued drop in fatalities. The number of deaths in the latest vehicle model released each year has fallen by nearly two-thirds in the past decade. In 2013, new cars had a lower fatality rate than cars fresh off the line did just a few years earlier. The broad decreases in fatality rates stem from several factors. Increased use of child restraints and seat belts has saved thousands of lives as compliance of mandatory seat belt laws from the 1980s, started to kick in.[8] Furthermore laws that restricted driving privileges for young drivers have also reduced fatalities.[9] But the critical component in reducing the number of deaths has been the snowballing improvements to vehicle-safety technology, say safety experts. Safety improvements, in particular electronic stability control (ESC) systems that make vehicles less likely to flip, are responsible for at least part of the drop in deaths.

Barry Wilson moderates the discussion with Dr CB CHOW of The University of Hong Kong and Julian Kwong of the Community for Road Safety during the Hong Kong forum .

Analysis of road accident data presented at the forum by both Dr CB CHOW and Dr Joey Li of the University of Hong Kong appeared to indicate clear geographic disparities in Hong Kong traffic accidents.  Whilst severe injury and death are lowest in the dense urban areas, the outlying new towns and their surrounding rural areas exhibited the highest risks, especially to car drivers and passengers. Pedestrians, the group at highest risk of traffic accidents, are found to be at greater risk in the dense urban areas where collisions are more likely. 

UK Pedestrians hit by vehicles
Image - Grim Reaper's Road Map

The Grim Reaper's Road Map by Mary Shaw, Bethan Thomas, George Davey Smith and Danny Dorling at the Universities of Sheffield and Bristol in the UK substantiate these figures for the UK, showing the places where people are most likely to die in a car crash. The lowest rates are found in urban areas, with London, Newcastle, Greater Manchester and Cardiff having particularly low incidence. In rural areas, where car use is more often necessary and where average speeds are higher, rates can be many times greater. The worst place for road deaths is the north of Scotland. Risk to pedestrians hit by vehicles is by contrast at its most severe in the urban centres. 

So how will Hong Kong jack up its efforts to reduce road accidents, particularly to children and pedestrians, now that car safety features are possibly as good as they can get? Road planning and engineering efforts in the territory have changed little in the last 40 years in terms of road layout and speed control. The Transport and Highways Departments, preoccupied with absorbing the increased traffic volumes on the roads, are repeatedly widening and providing increased design speeds for traffic throughout the territory. To keep pedestrians “safe” from these “improved” roads they need to marginalised behind endless concrete barriers, corralled by steel railings onto pavements no bigger than postage stamps and marshalled into inconvenient elevators and onto footbridges. The impact to our city and on its citizens is becoming increasingly damaging.

source - who.int

The last 20 years has seen a revolution in traffic management in many of the world’s towns and cities, with continued research producing innovative traffic design and management solutions aimed at providing improved road safety and traffic flows, whilst enhancing the  quality of the public realm for residents through which vehicles have to pass. New concepts are constantly being trialled and primary in this has been the realisation that walking and cycling are the preferred means of transport in cities, and that incorporating high speed, standardised highway design threatens pedestrian and bicycle safety whilst reducing the mobility of city dwellers and the quality of the environment in which they live. 

Image - flickr.com

Whilst Europe and America have introduced a whole gamut of initiatives raging from congestion charging; speed cameras, car free zones; low speed streets; removal of on-street parking; Woonerf; Shared Space; Homezone and Living Streets, to name but a few, Hong Kong has failed to implement anything but token initiatives to reduce the dominance of the car particularly in residential areas, not even speed humps. Car oriented planning is so entrenched in the philosophies of Transport and Highways Departments, whose sole conviction is absorbing increased traffic flows and the anticipation of potential congestion that there appears no likelihood of change on the horizon, despite continually lobbying from professional and community groups for a move to 21st century thinking. The continual deterioration in the urban environment for pedestrians is surely going to hamper the competitiveness of the city.

So in appreciation of the United Nations “Child Declaration for Road Safety”, I give my 10 point plan to address the design engineering of city streets in order to heighten road safety, relieve traffic congestion and improve the environmental quality of inner urban areas in the worlds developing cities:

1. Implement congestion charging schemes to central city areas to reduce non-essential car journeys and generate funding for alternative public transport uses;

2. Design, implement and enforce rigorous road speed restriction, reconfiguring streets to 20km/h; 30km/h and 40km/h design standards in dense urban areas for safer streets;

3. Develop pedestrian and bicycle only green infrastructure corridors and enforce their right of way over cars to achieve more equitable utilisation of public space;

4. Develop restricted vehicle access programmes to heavy footfall areas, avoiding peak pedestrian traffic hours;

5. Remove on-street parking and develop automated parking lots for efficient space utilisation;

6. Restrict allowable parking space provision in new built development to minimal numbers to discourage future car journeys;

7. Promote hierarchies of small scale, automated people mover and light transport solutions to address “last mile” travel connections from transport hubs;

8. Embrace IT innovation for improved real time vehicle flow management;

9. Promote well regulated “app” based taxi and car sharing initiatives; and

10. Reject existing road traffic projections and re-evaluate outdated city planning concepts in the context of today’s rapid societal changes, technological advances and unsustainable development.

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