Assessment of Awareness Raising Efforts by Addis Ababa City Administration Traffic Management Agency to Reduce Road Traffic Crashes
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Date
2021-11
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Road traffic crash has been a horrific and devastating life situation every single day. In
Addis Ababa on average one person loses his/her life per day or 480 people die per year on
the roads. The research is conducted to assess the awareness raising efforts by Addis Ababa
City Administration Traffic Management Agency (AATMA) to reduce road traffic crashes. To
meet the objective of the study, both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection
were used. A questionnaire was administered to 141 respondents. In addition, in- depth
interviews and a focus group discussion session were held with participants from AATMA.
Qualitative data was presented by descriptive narration and the quantitative one was
analyzed using SPSS version 20 and presented in the form of table and chart. The findings of
the study showed that the road safety awareness raising efforts of the Agency include among
other things offering awareness-raising education mostly in a planned and organized way,
preparing contents that address the behavioral and ethical problems of road users, working
with education sector to include road safety and traffic management system in the
curriculum, working at grass roots level i.e. having specialized and scheduled awareness
creation plan at public gatherings, utilizing media to educate or inform the public despite
some constraints. Hence, the findings of the study revealed that the awareness-raising efforts
played key role for the reduction of road traffic crashes. The study shows that such decline is
due to a combined effort of the three interventions of the Agency: education, enforcement and
engineering though the Agency gives first priority to engineering. Based on the findings of
the study, the researcher suggests possible recommendations for the problem. These include
media are believed to be key strategy and upper hand of awareness-raising strategies. The
finding of this study revealed that due to budget constraints and harsh financial rules, the
Agency is not fully utilizing the electronic media. To conduct up-to-date and better road
safety awareness-raising programs using the media, the City Administration has to allocate
sufficient budget for awareness-raising programs. The upper management of the Agency has
to remain engaged in lobbying media houses and other concerned bodies to largely discount
road safety program costs as road safety issue is a common social responsibility. Eventually,
the study gives some suggestions for further research.
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Road traffic crash has been a horrific and devastating