Skip to main content

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."

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • RIDOT's wrong-way driving systems ‘halt close to fifty potential crashes’
    May 6, 2016
    One year after its debut, Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) says its investment in wrong-way driving detection technology is proving to be very successful – none of the 47 wrong-way driving incidents where these systems have been installed has resulted in a wrong-way crash. Working with the Rhode Island State Police, RIDOT identified 24 high-risk locations for installing this technology at select ramps along I-95, I-195, Route 146, Route 10, Route 4, Route 6 and Routes 6/10 at Memorial Boule
  • EU research develops method for evaluating critical infrastructure
    January 10, 2013
    The European Commission’s SeRoN research project has drawn to a close, having developed a sophisticated method of identifying and quantifying threats to critical infrastructure. In December 2008 the European Commission published the directive 2008/114/EC on the identification, designation and assessment of the need to improve ‘European critical infrastructure’. In line with the objectives formulated in this directive, the SeRoN (Security of Road Transport Networks) research project was established in Novemb
  • Europe’s road safety gains have stagnated EU
    March 17, 2017
    Europe will fail to meet its road death targets as enforcement budgets are slashed and drivers face an epidemic of distractions. The European Union will not achieve its aim of halving the number of people killed on its roads each year by 2020, delegates to Tispol’s (the organisation of European traffic police) annual conference in Manchester were told. “The target will be missed because there was only a 17% decrease in road fatalities across Europe between 2010 and 2015 when [the rate of reduction] should h
  • Minnesota DOT deploys GTT’s Canoga to curb intersection vehicle crashes
    September 3, 2014
    Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) is working toward making the state’s roads safer, using the Canoga traffic sensing solution from Global Traffic Technologies (GTT) to warn at-risk drivers when cross-traffic is approaching. Nearly 70 per cent of fatal vehicle collisions in Minnesota, as well as other states, occur on roads in rural communities, where higher speeds, varying terrain and inconsistent sightlines can put many drivers in danger. The MnDOT initiative is part of the nationwide Towards