Risk perception, road behavior, and pedestrian injury among adolescent students in Kathmandu, Nepal

Abstract

Objective:To examine the relationship between the perceived safety of specified road behaviors, self-described road behaviors, and pedestrian injury among adolescent students in Kathmandu, Nepal.Methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted among 1557 adolescents in grades 6–8 across 14 schools in Kathmandu using a self-administered questionnaire in 2003. A multiple logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the data.Results:Adolescents were more likely to suffer from pedestrian injury when they did not always “wait for green signals to cross the road”. There were no significant associations between road behaviors such as “looking both ways along the road before crossing” or “playing in the road or sidewalks” and pedestrian injury. Adolescents who “perceived it safe to cross the road from any point” or “did not perceive it to be safer to cross the road at a zebra crossing” were less likely to “look both ways” or “wait for green signals” before crossing the road. Adolescents who “perceived it to be safe to play in the road” were more likely to play in the road or sidewalk. Similarly, this study showed a positive association between road safety education and adolescents’ road crossing behaviors.Conclusion:Adolescents’ road behaviors, except for compliance with green signals, were not significantly associated with pedestrian injury. This suggests that a behavioral approach without modification of the traffic environment (such as provision of crossing signals) might not effectively prevent the occurrence of pedestrian injury in developing countries with poor traffic conditions.

Epidemiology of unintentional child injuries in the South-East Asia Region: a systematic review

“…Howe et al (2006) identified that mental health status of caregivers is highly associated with all types of injuries in young children (infants and toddlers); while Mashreky et al (2009) reported that the relative risk of burn injuries is seven times higher in children under five years compared with children over five years and adults. Regarding the risk of pedestrian injuries, Poudel-Tandukar et al (2007) reported that children from poor households (no television ownership) have higher risk of injuries, however, other factors, such as distance to school, number of road crossings on the school journey and road use behaviours did not show statistical significance. Rahman et al (2006) analysed the risk factors for childhood drowning, which found that mothers aged over 30 years, illiterate mothers and lower family income were significantly associated with drownings.…”

“…Only seven papers reported the statistical analysis of risk factors (Chowdhury et al, 2009;Dandona et al, 2008;Howe et al, 2006;Mashreky et al, 2009;Poudel-Tandukar et al, 2007;Rahman et al, 2006;Rathinam et al, 2007). Age, gender and place of residence were the most widely reported risk factors for all injuries combined.…”

Built Environmental Designs in Promoting Pedestrian Safety

“…Younger drivers that are more likely to have risky behaviors lead to a greater fatality risk when they are involved in crashes [19,25,26]. Male pedestrians who usually have more risky behaviors than females are more likely to be severely injured [21,[27][28][29]. Drivers and pedestrians under the influence of alcohol behave riskily, which in turn increases the probability of injury severity [14,[18][19][20][21][22]25,26].…”

Pedestrian Crossing Environments in an Emerging Chinese City: Vehicle Encountering, Seamless Walking, and Sensory Perception Perspectives

“…This has been the major focus of a number of pedestrian studies. For example, studies dealing with pedestrian safety, in both signalised and un-signalised intersections, have been carried out by Muraleetharan et al [21], King et al [3] and Guo et al [22]; pedestrian risk-taking behaviour [4,23,24], such as drunk pedestrians [25], distracted walking [26], illegal pedestrian crossing behaviour [3,26], across different age groups, such as child pedestrians [27] and college students [26]; modelling pedestrian behaviour [28]; and pedestrian safety factors [5]. However, traffic signals are effective only when traffic rules are enforced as intended.…”