Priority Areas / Vulnerable Road Users
2. PROTECTION OF VULNERABLE ROAD USERS
The ones with more vulnerable and fragile structure when compared with others amongst the road user groups are referred to as the “Vulnerable Road Users (VRU)” in the traffic safety efforts in general. A part of this group is referred to as the vulnerable road users due to getting injured more in case being involved in any traffic accident (such as pedestrians and bicyclists), some (such as children, handicapped, and elderly people) due to being able to adapt to the traffic rules as against the others because of their bodily structure, and some (such as motorcycle riders and bicyclists) due to having proportionately more risk of loss of life compared to other road users in traffic accidents.
The reason behind some specific road users subjected to reverse discrimination as the “Vulnerable Road Users” is that as these people don’t have any additional protective equipment such as road structure and in-vehicle safety systems, they have the risk of easily losing their lives in traffic accidents. Taking additional measures for the road users in these groups will contribute to the efforts on decreasing the loss of lives in traffic accidents.
Table: Distribution of Deaths Happening on the Site of Accident in Traffic Accidents Between 2010-2019 (Driver-Passenger-Pedestrian)
Source: Prepared according to the records from the TNP Traffic Presidency .
Table: Distribution of Deaths Happening on the Site of Accident in Traffic Accidents Between 2010-2019
(Driver-Passenger-Pedestrian)
While 44,7% of the deaths happening on site of the accident in 2010 consisted of passengers, 39% of drivers, and 16,3% of pedestrians, the driver deaths increased to 45,6% and passenger to 39,2%, and pedestrian death decreased to 15,3% in 2019.
With the amendment made in the Article 74 of the Road Traffic Law No. 2918 to attract the attention to pedestrians in traffic in 2019; the verdict that “the drivers must slow down while approaching the intersection entrance and exit identified with traffic signs and signals but without any officer or traffic signal, and give the right of way to the pedestrians trying to or about to cross, if any, by stopping” was brought, concerning this regulation the year 2019 was declared to be the “Pedestrian Priority Traffic Year” by the Ministry of Interior, and activities were organized with the “Life is Your Priority, Priority Belongs to the Pedestrian” motto across 81 provinces in general.
|
YEARS |
CRASH SCENE |
POST CRASH |
TOTAL |
PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL DEATHS |
|
2015 |
612 |
1.198 |
1.810 |
|
|
2016 |
594 |
1.111 |
1.705 |
-5,8 |
|
2017 |
547 |
1.134 |
1.681 |
-1,4 |
|
2018 |
495 |
989 |
1.484 |
-11,7 |
|
2019 |
385 |
887 |
1.272 |
-14,3 |
PEDESTRIAN DEATHS IN TRAFFIC
(HUNDRED INDEX)
According to the Traffic Accident and Control Statistics Report, one can see that a large part of the population (male and female) losing their lives in traffic accidents consisted of adult individuals in the 25-64 age group in 2017. The population (male and female) at and over the age of 65 constituted the second rank. While the age group between 0-9 ranked third in females, the age group between 21-24 was the one in males.
When examining the distribution of people losing their lives due to traffic accident in 2018 by age and gender, one can see that a large part of the males and females losing their lives in traffic accidents consisted of adults in the age group of 25-64 as it was in the previous year. The other age and gender distributions are similar to the one in the previous year as well.
According to the 2019 Turkish Statistical Institute Road Traffic Accident Statistics, one can see that 42,7% of people losing their lives in traffic accidents happening in the road network of Turkey in 2019 were drivers, 34,1% were passengers, and 23,2% were pedestrians when examining the ones losing their lives and getting injured by gender, 76,2% of the ones dying were male, 23,8% were female, 67,2% getting injured were male, and 32,8% were female.
When discussing the road users cumulatively showing intensity in traffic accidents, the review and protection of the following groups are regarded as important to prevent loss of life and serious injuries by especially examining closer:
- Young drivers,
- Young Road Users,
- Elderly people,
- Persons with disabilities,
- High-Risk Drivers,
- Pedestrians,
- Bicyclists,
- Motorcycle riders.
Related to the groups indicated, it was deemed suitable to take preventive and protective measures by paying special attention and were discussed in detail as follows:
Young drivers
It is considered that young drivers may easily take the risk because of their age as well as not having proper driving skills yet. Moreover, they are considered to be involved in traffic accidents under the influence of such distracting reasons as drinking and driving and talking on the phone while driving as well as the speeding habit amongst young drivers. Additionally, the fact that young drivers with limited economic opportunities use vehicles with insufficient safety equipment is also effective in the loss of lives.
Therefore, it is evaluated that the campaign activities should be conducted continuously and the traffic trainings for the road users be provided in a way to involve formal and nonformal education including higher education starting from pre-school, the training programmes provided in motor vehicle courses be reviewed and updated periodically, and thus, the loss of lives of new drivers can be decreased.
Young Road Users
Desperate situations may probably happen in terms of traffic safety as a result of children between the ages of 03-14 being in any traffic environment in streets and avenues uncontrolled and coming across vehicle drivers. It isn’t possible for the children in this age group being different from adults in terms of age, height and weight to use the protection systems produced for adults in private and commercial vehicles. There is an increase in loss of lives and serious injuries, for the child protection systems aren’t used in the vehicles, and the bone development isn’t completed in this age group.
Going outside unaided, walking to school, and riding a bicycle at will in streets contributes to the psychological development of children in this age group seriously. Besides, activities particular to children such as playing games based on physical activity with their friends and riding bicycle play a serious role in the physical and psychological development of children.
However, streets, where traffic safety couldn’t be ensured sufficiently in terms of children, hinder these positive elements.
Elderly people
Another road user group that is affected the highest from unsecured roads is the elderly people. Traffic safety measures become more of an issue for the road users over a certain age with limitation of movement ability and accompanying diseases other than being old.
According to the data from the Turkish Statistical Institute, the population at and over the age of 65, accepted as the elderly population in Turkey, has increased 21,9% and reached to 7 million 550 thousand 727 people in 2019 in five years, while it was 6 million 192 thousand 962 in 2014. The percentage of elderly population within the total population has increased to 9,1% in 2019, while being 8,0% in 2014, and 44,2% of the elderly population consisted of males, while 55,8% did females in 2019.
It is predicted that the elderly population percentage will be 10,2% in 2023, 12,9% in 2030, 16,3% in 2040, 22,6% in 2060, and 25,6% in 2080 according to the population projections.58
The fragility of elderly road users is at a higher level due to weakened sensory abilities and reflexes, weak bones and other physical skills, and age-related health problems. According to the Statistical Journal of Persons with Disabilities and the Elderly of 2019 prepared by the Ministry of Family, Labour, and Social Services, one can see that 20% of the persons over the age of 65 have visual, 14,5% have hearing disorders, 30,2% have difficulty in walking, 38,5% have in climbing up and down the stairs, 20,4% have learning, and 12,7% remembering disability.59
Furthermore, drivers who are willing to continue driving after a certain age should be identified if capable of continuing driving with additional conditions except for the available driving rules.
Persons with disabilities
Data collection criteria on the profile of the persons with disabilities differ in Turkey based on the definition and classification of disability changing on earth. The detection of the number of persons with disabilities over administrative records is of great importance in terms of the policy-making institutions for persons with disabilities, the number of persons alive and registered to the National Data System of Persons with Disabilities established for this purpose is 2.521.933, 1.422.691 of which is male, and 1.099.242 of which is female as of 2019. The number of persons with a severe disability is 737.367.60
As a result of benefitting from traffic safety, the persons with disabilities stay connected to their place of residence and maintain their lives with the assistance of others by living a socially isolated life.
The rights of persons with disabilities are in the scope of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and Turkey has approved the aforesaid convention with the Cabinet Decree No 2009/15137.
Unsecured and non-accessible transport systems, poor infrastructure design, and the use of walking trails jointly by persons with disabilities and other road users are the main factors hindering the abilities of persons with disabilities to move safely in a traffic environment.
High-Risk Drivers
As some drivers get into the habit of performing risky behaviours in traffic, the potential they have in being involved in traffic accidents as the faulty party is higher than other drivers. Although the number of dangerous and reckless drivers, namely the high-risk driver group who are incapable, without a driver’s license, performing excessive speed, have the habit of driving under the influence of alcohol/substance, are proportionately few, they play a fundamental role in the happening of traffic accidents and risking the other road users.
Objective-driven controls and awareness-raising campaigns are the most important elements to ensure the compliance of high-risk drivers to the safe traffic environment. Technology-based solutions such as the Intelligent Speed Adaptors or Alcolocks are also the most effective methods of preventing such high-risk drivers.
Pedestrians
Although the distance covered by walking is short, it is admitted being the most common mode of travel. However, pedestrians, persons who can walk with walking frames (such as walking stick and walker), and ones using wheelchair constitute the most vulnerable road users. People of all ages get injured or lose their lives as a result of pedestrian accidents.
Walking has serious contributions to human health, and it constitutes the most active, environmentalist, and cheapest mode of transport. As travelling by walking becomes a habit, the pedestrian safety becomes more of an issue. The perceived aspect of traffic safety is effective on whether people will decide to walk or not. Therefore, the vehicles moving at a safe speed and the street design made suitable for walking and riding is of key importance for pedestrian safety.
Bicyclists
Riding bicycle as walking has many serious contributions to society as well. The demand for riding a bicycle in cities increase day by day and the accessibility has increased thanks to the increasing use of motorcycles in the streets recently.
There are mainly two ways of increasing the safety of bicycles; lowering the reel speed of vehicles in road sections where there is the possibility of vehicles coming across bicycles in a level which will not harm them or separating the roads used by bicyclists, pedestrians, and vehicles from one another with physical barriers. Solution suggestions on how to ensure the safety of athletes riding bicycles, families, and children riding to school more are developed in many societies.
Motorcycle riders
Motorcycle use is one of the transport modes with the highest risk. According to the researches conducted, using a motorcycle is 21 times more dangerous than driving a vehicle. Again, according to the researches, 85% of persons getting injured and 93% of the persons losing their lives in motorcycle accidents consist of males.
More motorcycle controls, increasing efforts on raising awareness, enhancing road design standards, frequent follow-up of road maintenance and repair, wearing personal protective equipment, and the availability of the Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) in motorcycles are beneficial measures in increasing motorcycle safety.
In terms of the protection of vulnerable road users, the World Health Organization suggests that some basic, affordable, and effective safety measures should be taken by the road users themselves for their own safety. As measures the following are recommended:61
Pedestrians:
- Should wear white or light-coloured clothes enabling visibility,
- Should wear clothes with reflective features and strips or put on ornaments with such strips on the clothes (For example, wearing reflective ornaments over the school bags)
- Walking at the road sections with sufficient lighting,
- Walking in a way to ensure that the arrival of the vehicle traffic is on the opposite side.
Bicyclists:
- To have a reflector in front, side, and rear of the bicycle tires,
- To have bicycle lights,
- To wear clothes or vests with a reflective feature.
Two-wheeler motor vehicle drivers:
- To turn the daytime lights (Researches indicate that strengthened two-wheelers with turned on daytime lights involved in traffic accidents 29% less.)
- To wear clothes or vests with a reflective or fluorescent feature,
- To wear light-coloured clothes,
- To wear light-coloured protective head guards,
- To have reflectors on the rear end of the motorcycles
VULNERABLE ROAD USERS
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE: Taking Necessary Measures To Protect Vulnerable Road Users and Preventing Loss of Lives
GUIDING STRATEGIES AND SUGGESTIONS
1. The efforts on ensuring high-level safety for the vulnerable road users in urban areas over against the increase in the number of motor vehicles, providing a living space for people in urban life, and decreasing vehicle traffic in the city have become an important topic of urban traffic safety.
To that end;
i. To ensure an urbanization infrastructure, where people can meet their needs and deal with their core activities by walking and continue their live without needing vehicles, and will have to use the vehicles in very urgent situations,
ii. To centralize the activities to not be able to be considered within this scope and set up a rapid, environmentalist, affordable, safe, and comfortable public transportation network with this centre,
iii. Taking incentive measures to ensure that public transportation is preferred and other measures to ensure that individual vehicles aren’t preferred.
2. The second matter, after taking the first measures and ensuring the mobility of people living in urban areas by walking, riding or public transportation along with necessary urbanization regulations, is to prevent the loss of life or serious injury of citizens referred to as vulnerable road users canalized to walking and riding as a result of traffic accident. The following should be ensured in this for this purpose:
i. Determining pedestrian and bicycle routes to be away from the roads used by motor vehicles, to not intersect with the roads used by motor vehicles, and to be preferred by road users,
ii. Determining the maximum speed of vehicles to be used in places where there are citizens walking or traveling by bicycle minimally in a way to prevent any harm to pedestrians and bicyclists in a potential collision.
3. To prevent the vulnerable road users from getting harmed as a result of traffic accidents despite the measures taken:
i. To construct separate roads pertinent to their intended use and limiting the distance these roads will cover in residential areas, their entrances and exits (such as the wholesale middleman vehicles bringing stuff to markets using separate roads or routes),
ii. To ensure physical separation of the light vehicle from heavy ones, high-speed vehicles from low-speed ones, turning vehicles from the ones going straight, and the ones having to frequently approach the bus station, stop, and take off such as municipality buses,
iii. To facilitate the comprehension of the road by road users with the design of roads as self-expressing roads,
iv. To ensure the high-level use of protective equipment and teach risk-reducing driving techniques.
4. To make necessary amendments to increase the safety of vulnerable road users by evaluating the available traffic rules in force in terms of their suitability for the safety of vulnerable road users particularly. (For example; the practice of converse mobility of bicycles in the flowing traffic in roads and streets used by one-way traffic being a preferred practice in terms of traffic safety due to enabling the easier recognition between bicycles and vehicles),
5 Making legal arrangements depending developments, by following up the developments on the active and passive measures taken to protect vulnerable road users,
6. Taking necessary measures without waiting for any accident to happen by the on-site exploration of cases such as lack of sufficient infrastructure, pedestrian crossing, and bicycle lanes, insufficient pavement width, the pavements being too high to be got on by children and elderly or too low to keep the car bumpers away from pedestrians, the availability of peddlers in pedestrian ways and pavements or the sales of products by markets or shops outside, and therefore not leaving enough space for pedestrians to walk, and thus the pedestrians using the road sections allocated to vehicles, and taking necessary correctional actions in line with the measures,
7. Taking necessary measures and supporting to ensure that walking and riding is preferred by citizens by being integrated into all transportation modes,
8. Determining the maximum speed limit as 30 km/hrs in places with intensive activity areas such as schools, playgrounds, sanctuaries, malls, gyms, theatre halls and cinemas, concert and picnic areas, wedding saloons, and tea gardens and bicyclists in places where there are residential areas in urban areas,
9. Incentivizing pedestrian and bicycle road by means of announcing the infrastructure arrangements on the use of pedestrian and bicycle roads, and their safety to citizens numerically (km) in urban road sections
10. Determining hierarchical priority amongst road users and ensuring that pedestrians are in the first place in this hierarchy and bicycles and public transportation follow pedestrians respectively,
11. Ensuring that the routes to be used by pedestrians and riders in urban transportation are the safest routes, and making infrastructural and environmental arrangements pertinent to the use of pedestrians and riders,
12. Remembering that the safety increases when the route shortens, and that safety remained low when the route grows longer in the planning of urban routes,
13. Related to the measures to facilitate urban traffic, the preparation of best practice guidelines related to the road sections including the method samples such as rotary intersections, lane and road reducing, roadside arrangements (flower gardens, coloured pavement steps, zigzags, etc.), speed bumps, and other space-sharing methods, and where the maximum speed was determined as 30 km/hrs and its distribution to municipalities and subunits,
14. Determining the standards related to the use of bicycle lighting and reflective equipment and putting into practice to increase the visibility of bicyclists,
15. In addition to the objective on decreasing traffic accident deaths and serious injuries by 50% between 2021 and 2030, determining a specific objective to decrease the mortality rate of vulnerable road users like pedestrians and bicyclists by 50% within this period,
16. Ensuring the inclusion of vehicle safety assessments in numbers on vehicles to raise the awareness of vehicle producers and users,
17. There is a blind spot which the driver cannot see due to the structure of large vehicles identified as heavy vehicles and when compared with vehicles, it becomes even harder to see physically smaller pedestrians and bicyclists in aforesaid blind spots. Therefore, under the EU directive No. 2007/38/EC on preventing the heavy vehicles from posing a risk against pedestrians and riders, increasing their mirrors, rearranging the cabin structure in a way not to leave any blind spot in the viewpoint of the driver, and installing camera systems, active warning systems, and protective devices at the proper height to protect pedestrians and riders,
18. Supporting the practice of keeping Intelligent Speed Assistance System in vehicles as part of the speed-reducing technologies,
19. Providing necessary support to promote the practice of “Wind Screen Air Bag” developed to protect vulnerable road users, especially the pedestrians,
20. Taking necessary measures to record all traffic accidents involving pedestrians and bicycles, and ensuring raising the awareness of health care staff on the potential of trauma cases applying to health care institutions originating from traffic accidents and recording,
21. For the accident investigation to be conducted standardly and in-depth in traffic units, detecting accident investigation standards, provision of information required by accident investigation units by relevant institutions, and determining the typology related to the accidents where vulnerable road users lose their lives and evaluating the measures to be taken,
22. Developing projects to ensure the access of children and students to these places in the safest way by launching projects such as “Safe School Road”, “Safe Park Road”, for children and students to walk and ride safely to places such as school and playground,
23. Within these projects, putting combinedly into practice measures such as designating pedestrian walks with horizontal and vertical signs and different colours and mottos, taking the vehicle density in traffic to other routes, placing physical barriers, minimizing speed limit, decreasing or preventing vehicle traffic, ensuring sufficient street lighting, and eliminating structures that will hinder the vision.