Home » Researcher’s course 2023, Winneba

Researcher’s course 2023, Winneba

6-7 June 2023

Winneba, Ghana

Local organizers: Enoch F. Sam

The course is organized in close co-operation with the University of Education, Winneba, in connection to the XII (extra) ICTCT conference.

Faculty

The course faculty consists of senior researchers and university professors with an extensive experience in road safety.

Attila Borsos
University of Gyor
Hungary

Attila Borsos received his master’s degree in Economics from the University of Gyor, Hungary, and in Civil Engineering from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He gained his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Gyor, Hungary, where he is an associate professor in the Department of Transport Infrastructure and Water Resources Engineering since 2012 and vice dean for research in the Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Transport Sciences since 2015. He was a Visiting Scholar at Florida Atlantic University in 2013 and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Connecticut in 2010. He was a member of the PIARC World Road Association Technical Committee 3.2 ‘Design and Operation of Safer Road Infrastructure’ from 2012 to 2015. His main research interest is road safety, more specifically accident prediction models, traffic safety trends, surrogate measures of safety, and the effect of Autonomous Vehicles on safe road design.

James Damsere-Derry
CSIR-Building & Road Research Institute
Ghana

James Damsere-Derry is Senior Research Officer at CSIR-Building & Road Research Institute, Kumasi, Ghana. He holds a B.A. in Geography and Sociology from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, a Master of Public Health from the University of Washington, USA, and Ph.D. in Road Safety Research from the Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety-Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

Dr. Damsere-Derry’s main research fields in road safety are speeding, drink/drug-driving and social and psychosocial determinants of road traffic injuries. He has published over 20 scientific articles and has contributed to scientific conferences. He is a member of the International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety, the International Epidemiological Association as well as the Road Traffic Injuries Research Network.

Stijn Daniels
Transport & Mobility Leuven
KU Leuven
Belgium

Stijn Daniels, the president of ICTCT, is a researcher and consultant in transport planning, road safety and mobility at Transport & Mobility Leuven (TML), Belgium. He is also a part-time professor in Traffic and Transport Safety at KU Leuven, faculty of Engineering.

His primary research interest is road safety: causes and mechanisms associated with road crashes and near-crash events, effects of road design on crash occurrence, safety issues for vulnerable road users, effectiveness analysis, cost-benefit analysis and economic valuation.

Wafa Elias
Shamoon College of Engineering
Israel

Wafa Elias works in the fields of travel behavior and road safety, with particular expertise in factors that impact travel behavior and road safety among the Israeli Arab minority.

Wafa Elias has developed a theoretical framework that connects daily activity patterns and driving behavior, and the risk of being involved in road crashes. To better understand these complex relationships, Wafa focuses on disaggregate studies of individual characteristics, attitudes, activity and travel behavior, residential location, the build environment, social interaction, and the impact of these on road safety.

Haneen Farah
Delft University of Technology
the Netherland

Dr. ir. Haneen Farah is an Associate Professor in the Department of Transport and Planning and a co-director of the Traffic and Transportation Safety Lab at the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Her research interests lie in the fields of road infrastructure design, road user behaviour, and traffic safety. She is currently investigating the implications of the advances in vehicle technology and automation on these fields. In her research she combines her expertise in transportation engineering, with her curiosity in the fields of human factors and econometrics.

Before joining TU Delft Haneen Farah was a postdoctoral researcher at KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering from the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology.

Sonja Forward
Swedish Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI)
Sweden

Dr Sonja Forward is a psychologist and a research leader at the Swedish Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) focusing on traffic safety and sustainable transport. Her research covers many areas but mainly psychological factors predicting behaviour and how unwanted behaviour can be changed, using education or campaigns. The methods used are both quantitative and qualitative.

Sonja Forward has been in charge of numerous projects both nationally and internationally. She has produced written materials including an extensive manual for working with campaigns. She is also lecturing on a regular basis and have presented papers at numerous conferences, mostly as an invited speaker.

Aliaksei Laureshyn
Lund University
Sweden

Aliaksei Laureshyn is Reader in traffic safety and a senior lecturer at Lund University, Sweden. His primary research interests deal with theory and practical use of pro-active methods in road safety analysis. He is an active member in several international committees and working groups related to the subject of Surrogate Measures of Safety (SMoS). Other research interests include emerging technologies for data collection in traffic, policy and practice in road safety work, particularly in the view of Vision Zero/Safe System paradigm.

Enoch F. Sam
University of Education, Winneba
Ghana

Enoch F. Sam is an Associate Professor of Transport Geography at the University of Education, Winneba, Ghana. He has over ten years of experience in teaching and research in public transport safety management, traffic safety, traffic behaviour of vulnerable road users, and sustainable urban mobility. He has published over 20 scientific articles, five book chapters, and a book and has contributed to scientific conferences. Prof Sam has won many research and academic awards and grants. He is currently an Executive Board member and Lead country researcher of the European Commission funded-project AfroSAFE. He also serves as an Associate Editor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Communications; Editorial Board member of the Transactions on Transport Sciences (TOTS) and the African Journal of Social Sciences Education.

Programme

6 June 2023

Road safety problems and collection of data

’How to measure Road Traffic Safety?’

Attila Borsos
University of Gyor, Hungary

This lecture will be about what exposure data to be used for risk assessment; road fatality trends historically; the correlation between human live values and fatality rates; 3-dimensional analysis of accidents; problems with using accidents; non-accident based road safety indicators to analyse the traffic safety situation.

’The state of road safety in Ghana’

Enoch Sam
University of Education, Winneba, Ghana

The lecture will present a trend analysis of Ghana’s road safety situation (crashes, fatalities, risk factors etc.). The lecture will present a framework for promoting road safety management. Course participants will develop (group activity) relevant recommendations (policies, interventions, and strategies) to enhance road safety management in Ghana, amenable to other African countries.

’Sources and harmonization of road traffic crash data’

James Damsere-Derry
CSIR-Building & Road Research Institute, Kumasi, Ghana

Road traffic crash database is an important source of information for understanding road safety scenarios like patterns, trends and severity. A reliable data source is not only important for national planning and target setting purposes but also for international comparison which allows for adopting best practices from countries doing well. The credibility and authenticity of a crash database is underscored when different sources tend to report values that are comparable and shows less disparities.

’Surrogate measures of safety and behavioral observation studies’

Aliaksei Laureshyn
Lund University, Sweden

Quite often, researchers cannot rely on historical accident counts due to their scarcity, poor quality (due to under-reporting or errors in coding) or simply due to absence of any history (in case of newly built sites). In such situations, alternative methods for measuring safety performance are called for. In this lecture we will discuss how traffic conflict and behavioural observations can be used as a complement—or a supplement—for accident data. A significant part of the lecture will be devoted to watching and discussing the actual traffic videos, what safety relevant information could be extracted from them and how it should be interpreted and generalized.

7 June 2023

Traffic safety measures and policies

‘Introduction to contributing factors to accidents, theory of countermeasures, human factors’

Attila Borsos
University of Gyor, Hungary

In this lecture the 3-dimensional analysis of road safety problems (exposure, risk, consequence) as well as the various factors affecting these dimensions will be explained. Countermeasures in the domains of infrastructure, vehicle and road user directed to these three dimensions will be then discussed. The Haddon Matrix will be also covered, which is an in-depth crash analysis tool to evaluate safety issues before, during and after the crash.

‘How does infrastructure influence road safety behavior?’

Haneen Farah
Delft University of Technology, the Netherland

In her interactive lecture Haneen will discuss how does the infrastructure design influence road safety behaviour. We will discuss together how to apply key human factor concepts and theories in road infrastructure design, and how by this we can influence road users’ behaviour and increase safety.

‘How do (information) campaigns influence road safety behavior?’

Sonja Forward
Swedish Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI), Sweden

A traditional approach taken in road safety research has been to view accidents as a failure to cope with the perceptual motor skills required for a safe journey. The task was therefore to increase driver’s skills and to modify the environment. However, in recent years, it has been found that the problem does not always lie in what the driver can or cannot do but what he/she decides to do. The crucial issue is therefore to understand what motivates drivers to commit an act, which puts both themselves and others at risk. Different campaigns have been developed trying to change peoples’ behaviour although some of them have had little or no effect. One conclusion drawn from this could be that money could be better spent. However, in this lecture I will argue that the reason for this failure is that the programmes are poorly developed and use a language which does not address the psycho-social processes underlying the behaviour.

‘How does enforcement influence road safety behavior?’

Wafa Elias
Shamoon College of Engineering, Israel

Wafa’s lecture will give an overview of deterrence theories. She will highlight the effectiveness of the various penalties by examining the impact of demographic and socio-economic characteristics on the effectiveness of the various penalties. We will try together to show who the traffic offenders are, and which factors contribute to the involvement and repetitiveness of offenses.

‘Safe System in traffic safety’

Stijn Daniels
Transport & Mobility Leuven | KU Leuven, Belgium

In this session we will introduce the principles of a Safe System approach to road safety. Such an approach looks at safety as an integral part of the wider road traffic system. We will discuss in the group to what extent this approach differs from other approaches and what consequences this could have on current road safety policies.