Abstract:
Road traffic collisions are increasing at an alarming rate in Bangladesh. Many have caught
the attention of the public, and the administration and government. In this study, the
Accimap methodology is used to analyze five high-profile road traffic collisions from a
sociotechnical point of view. These road accident case-studies differ in the context in which
the accident occurred, type of collision, level of severity and traffic settings (e.g. highway
or urban street) to represent an overall scenario of Bangladesh Road Safety System.
Sociotechnical approaches have gained popularity in high income countries for
investigating such incidents, but it is still very new to practitioners in low-income countries.
The integrated framework provides an insight into the interactions between different levels
of a studied system, and supports the development of recommendations that could mitigate
or prevent the outcomes of such incidents in the future. In this research work, after
evaluating a number of systems-based methodologies, Accimap approach has been selected
to carry out the analysis of accident case-studies. Firstly, a generic Actor Map for
Bangladesh Road Safety System has been generated which is then used as the basis to build
Actor Map models as well as Accimaps for the selected road collision studies. To held aid
in proper investigation, information regarding the accident events have been collected from
popular media reports, accident investigation reports and local interviews.
In this comparative analysis, most of the recommendations came from enforcement
perspective and engineering recommendations ranked second but it does not indicate that
reformations based on only enforcement and engineering will not bring positive changes
rather all of these recommendations need to be implemented in synergy. It was also
revealed that blaming a specific actor at the lower level of the system cannot help mitigate
accidents, rather reformations in the whole sociotechnical system need to be made that go
beyond the traditional three E’s of engineering, enforcement, and education. By integrating
the different levels of the system, from international committees to end users, a systematic
approach can be developed to improve road traffic collision analysis and reporting in
Bangladesh. A systems-based accident analysis techniques although widely used in highincome
developed countries, it is still very new in low-income developing countries like
Bangladesh and has a promising aspect in alleviating the degraded road safety scenario.
