TRL supports Bangladesh road safety data initiative

An institutional framework for data collection will facilitate evidence-based road design
By Adam Hill March 17, 2023 Read time: 2 mins
Dhaka, Bangladesh: part of the contract will be to develop safety interventions derived from crash data (© Nuvisage | Dreamstime.com)

Bangladesh Roads and Highways Department (RHD) has chosen TRL to help the country improve its crash data collection and analysis.

Funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB), the project will identify the key challenges for RHD and other agencies in Bangladesh to develop safety interventions derived from crash data and to create an improved road safety audit process.

Bangladesh has a National Road Safety Strategy Action Plan which aims to cut road crash fatalities by 50% by 2030. Calculating the fatality rate and designing safe roads will bring the country closer to its goal of systematically adding road safety considerations into its network development.

While a large number of crashes occur in Bangladesh, data collection is challenging, with estimates varying between international bodies, local NGOs, the police and the general public about the actual number of deaths and serious injuries happening on the network.

TRL has been hired to help put together an institutional framework for RHD in crash data collection and management; roll out of a crash data collection and management system; a roadmap to institutionalise road safety audit in RHD’s business process: and an updated road safety audit manual.

"TRL has a long history of researching the causes of crashes and the factors that contribute to them that has saved lives the world over, says TRL’s CEO Paul Campion.

"Coupled with our long experience of developing manuals for many countries, taking into consideration the local conditions, our work in Bangladesh will help authorities to identify key risks on the network from the crash data and through an improved audit process support the RHD team on solutions to increase road safety."

“Our work with TRL will improve our understanding of the causes of crashes and enable more effective measures to be put in place to prevent them,” says RHD project director Fazlul Karim.

“We know the project will make a significant contribution to reducing the number of crashes and casualties on our roads. Amongst other needs, identifying bottlenecks and roadblocks in various areas of road safety in Bangladesh will help us determine the crash rates and their severity, calculate the fatality rate, and as a consequence, design the required safety measures."

Enforcement Classification & Data Collection Urban Traffic Control

Related Content

  • Report highlights cost effectiveness of crash reduction strategy
    November 21, 2017
    Local authorities in the UK needs an immediate injection of £200 million to tackle the high risk road sections, according to a new report from the Road Safety Foundation charity and Ageas UK. Called Cutting the Cost of Dangerous Roads, the report reveals that UK motorways and ‘A’ roads on the EuroRAP network make up 10% of the road network that contains half of all road deaths. It found that single carriageway ‘A’ roads have a risk factor seven times higher than motorways and nearly three times that of d
    Read More
  • Building the case for photo enforcement
    October 26, 2016
    As red light enforcement is returning to some intersections and being shut down at others, new evidence has been released backing the safety campaigners, reports Jon Masters. In 2014, 709 Americans were killed in red-light-running crashes and an estimated 126,000 were injured according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
    Read More
  • Vulnerable road users face safety problems
    May 18, 2012
    Concern is growing in Europe over the safety standards for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and powered two wheeler riders. A total of 169,000 pedestrians, cyclists and users of powered two-wheeled vehicles (PTW) have been killed on European roads since 2001; 15,300 of them in 2009. The figures have been published in the new Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) report and reveal a decrease in the number of deaths by 34% for pedestrians and cyclists, and just 18% for PTW riders compared to
    Read More
  • UN vehicle regulations ‘could prevent deaths and injuries in Brazil’
    November 17, 2015
    A new research report from the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) has revealed that 34,000 Brazilian lives could be saved and 350,000 serious injuries prevented by 2030, if UN vehicle safety regulations were adopted and car manufacturers sought to achieve higher ratings in the Latin NCAP crash test programme. Published on the eve of the second High Level Conference on Road Safety in Brazil, the independent study, which was commissioned by Global NCAP, highlights the gap between the regulated vehicl
    Read More

Highlighted Content