A Study of the Factors That Influence the Rate of Pedestrian Accidents in Lagos Ikorodu Expressway, Nigeria

Abstract

The most common mode of movement to all inhabitants is walking. It cuts across the rich and poor, the young and old, the able and disable or the male and female. It is one means of movement that comes by instinct, naturally, not involving any learning process. As a matter of facts, we are all pedestrians at some point in our journey. The increase in human population has shown an increase in vehicular traffic and no doubt, traffic volume has been found to be a major contributing factor to pedestrian crashes. The aim of this study is to carry out a road safety audit (RSA) as well as investigating the factors that influence pedestrian accidents in Lagos Ikorodu expressway in Lagos, Nigeria. Direct observation and reconnaissance survey were employed for the purpose of this paper. Pedestrian traffic count was also conducted to obtain the daily and hourly movement of pedestrian in the study area. Structured questionnaire was used to obtain the perception of respondents on the causes of pedestrian accident while Yamane sample size determination was employed to determine the sample size of 514 respondents. Five hundred and fourteen (514) copies of questionnaire were administered out of which 500 were returned and analysed using Stepwise regression. The result shows that drunkenness (x2) is the major factor that cause pedestrians accident in the study area with about 56.5% of the variation. Pedestrian carelessness (x3) contributed 6.7% to accident rates while poor enlightenment (x 4 ) and over speeding (x1) accounted for 6.6% and 3.6% respectively. The study recommend that highways patrol officers should be well trained on how to identify drunk drivers using blood alcohol concentration (BAC) equipment, pedestrians need to be more educated and enlightened through various awareness campaign as well as inculcating traffic education at schools, government should also ensure that there is a stipulated overall speed limit for urban centres and finally, the concept of FOOT and TOES was suggested to help minimize pedestrian accidents.