Road Safety and the Number of Accidents

¶ … road safety and the number of accidents that are caused by the lack of it.

Stakeholder analysis

This is the first stage in the situational assessment. Here, the partners that are likely to have the most involvement in the area are discussed in order to implement data to improve the situation. In the road safety case, the police and transport bodies have the highest stake. Another stakeholder is the health authorities who are entitled to offering their services in case of trouble on the road. The traffic police have a large stake in road safety as it is their efforts that can change the situation on the roads. Through tighter legislation, the traffic police have the ability to instill discipline on the roads and also maintain order.

The engineers who have the mandate to construct roads determine the quality of the roads that the vehicles travel in regularly. Also, it is in their mandate to examine and offer remedies to any emerging defects. This assessment is also vital to the trauma specialists and individuals involved in the public health department. Also, inclusive in this step is the government, agencies, NGO's, and academic institutions (Underwood & ICTTP 2004). This stage also determines the roles that they all have for the cause. The traffic department has the role of doing their part in maintaining order on the roads. The engineers have a vital job in making satisfactory roads and maintaining where there are defects. The public health department has to create emergency programs that can cater for immediate response on the accidents whenever they ocur. It is also vital that the there is a clear definition of the mode of involvement of these parties. An example is the traffic police who have to work as partners. The government best works as an adviser while the NGO's perform efficiently in the role of consultants (Underwood & ICTTP 2004). There are expected challenges when dealing with these parties especially because of conflict of interests, but with the right conviction, the effect will be beneficial in overall.

Data assessment

Road safety is a serious issue globally. Approximately more than 1.3 million people perish annually globally. This amounts to more than 3000 people dying daily. On average, between 20 million to 50 million people get serious injuries. Moreover, half of these people are young people in their productive ages below 44. The fact that road accidents are among the top ten killers in the world, cements the hypothesis of the urgency of the matter. Predictions show that if nothing is done at the moment, then the road carnages will account for more deaths and climb to 5th position (ASIRT 2011). It is intriguing to note that most of the dangerous accidents are in the low and middle income countries. In the U.S., the statistics reflect exactly those of the whole globe. On average, there are almost 40,000 deaths each year. The numbers of people who are injured are approximately 2.35 million. Young drivers account for some of accidents in the country. More than 8000 of these casualties are as a result of drivers that are between 16 and 20 (ASIRT 2011). Road accidents in the country also increase the infant mortality. Approximately, 1600 children including the teenagers perish in road accidents. It is intriguing to note that for those healthy citizens that live abroad, this happens to be the greatest killer. This data is from an NGO that deals with the statistics of road safety globally. This implies that there is a chance that there are biases in the collection of data. In spite of there being a chance that t6here could be missing data and also errors of recording, the data assessment gives a fair representation of the situation (ASIRT 2011).

End-user needs assessment

The conducting of the end user assessment is crucial since it helps in the comprehension of the diversity of the users. Also, it is possible to determine the resources that are required for the implementation of the disaster management. Apart from determining where the new resources for road safety will come from, there is better knowledge of maintaining the already existing resources. The users of this information are all the stakeholders in this industry. For one, the government is utterly responsible for the creation of measures that will control all the other stakeholders including the public health and traffic police departments (Banbury & Tremblay 2004). This assessment will also involve the collection of information from the public on their opinions concerning road safety. Observation and analysis of discussions will give information about the problems and suitable solutions (Elvik 2009). Consequently, there will be the creation of a committee that will implement the discussions in the assessment.