Pedestrian Behavior and Its Influence to Improve Road Safety in Ecuador

Abstract

According to WHO [1] data, about 1.4 million people die each year from road traffic collisions. Traffic collisions continue to be the one of the main causes of death in the world, which reflects that the lack of road safety is still a serious global problem, especially in low- and middle-income countries, where road safety policies they have not been as closely studied or implemented, resulting in a strong social impact. Ecuador is a developing country, and with a high mortality rate due to traffic collisions, it currently does not have the research base necessary to implement a properly informed management and intervention plan in order to improve road safety. This is the reason of this study. This project is mainly focused on the analysis of a pedestrian’s attitude and behavior as factors that are linked to minor, serious and moderate collisions on the roads. The analysis of these factors gives us extremely important information, which in turn includes those points where more attention should be paid from the health perspective. An interesting information of data obtained after analyzing the results of this project is that 60% of the population analyzed, whether as a pedestrian, driver or passenger, has been in a situation that could end in a serious collision, but did not end up injuring people. In other words, a large percentage of the population runs the risk of being harmed in a collision on the road due of the lack of road safety.