Behaviours of the taxi motorcycle drivers of Arusha City
Author(s): Perego, Biassoni, Ciceri
Slidedeck Presentation Only (no paper submitted):
Abstract:
In Tanzania between 2006 and 2014, the number of registrations for 2 or 3 wheeled vehicles has been climbing, with 20,117 in 2006 and 185,100 in 2014. In 2014 more than 50% of registered vehicles were motorised 2 and 3 wheelers, and 22% of the deaths caused by crash accidents were drivers of this kind of vehicle (WHO, 2015).
The principal aim of this research is to confront the fatalistic beliefs of commercial (called 'Bodaboda') and recreational African motorcycle drivers and improve their knowledge of the road in order to try to reduce the number of crashes. This study is the second part of a traffic psychology project for Bodaboda drivers of the Arusha region in Tanzania. A first Bodaboda questionnaire was distributed to 54 Bodaboda drivers in Arusha city in March and April 2016. A final version of the BbQ was written in Swahili after a focus group with Swahili-English speakers and was distributed to 513 Bodaboda drivers in Arusha in December 2016. The distribution was carried out by 14 trained interviewers.
The 513 subjects replied to 46 questions to investigate 7 different sections: demographic information, use of the protective equipment, passengers, maintenance of motorcycle, police fines and bribes, driver's crash history and reasons of the road crashes.
The Bodaboda drivers were also recorded with a video camera in different roads of Arusha in August 2017 in order to understand the gap between questionnaire's answers and real driving behaviours. Bodaboda drivers in the sample had a relatively low mean age of 27.56 years and 95.1% of the drivers interviewed consider themselves to be good drivers. 47.9% of them have been involved in a crash, with 60.2% of these drivers having been involved in more than one crash. For the drivers, the most frequent cause of a crash is poor driving skill (56.1%). Interestingly, fatalism is listed by only 1.9% of the drivers.
The videos recorded with the video camera in Arusha City are still being under decoded. This research shows a lot of problematic scenarios. A big part of drivers admits doing illegal behaviour such as not using their mobile phone while driving, always wearing a helmet, or transporting more than one passenger on their motorcycle.
The enforcement of traffic rules by the police appears to be inadequate and half of the drivers in this sample admit to having bribed the traffic police. The questionnaire study revealed a disparity in the view of responsibility for motorcycle crashes, while drivers see the cause for their own past crashes mainly as predetermined, they assume the causes for traffic crashes in general to be provoked by human behaviour and poor driver training. The results of this investigation represent a starting point for road safety in Tanzania and sub-Saharan Africa. Bodaboda drivers show a lot of different illegal behaviour, and effective police enforcement is hindered by widespread bribery. In conclusion more education, a modification of existing road rules and increasing police enforcement is needed to improve road safety in Tanzania.