TRL’s work will help to improve understanding of the causes of crashes and enable more effective measures of prevention.

TRL is delighted to announce it has won a major project with Bangladesh Roads and Highways Department (RHD) funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB), to help Bangladesh solve its crash data collection and analysis challenge, as part of its commitment to improve road safety for its citizens.

Through the project, TRL will identify the key challenges for RHD and other agencies in Bangladesh, to fulfill a mandate to ensure a safer roads network by identifying safety interventions derived from crash data and an improved road safety audit process. The project aims to achieve the following broader outcomes – an institutional framework for RHD in crash data collection and management; roll out of a crash data collection and management system for RHD; a roadmap to institutionalise road safety audit in RHD’s business process, and an updated road safety audit manual. 

As with many countries, Bangladesh faces a challenge collecting crash data. A large number of crashes occur in the country, but the estimates vary between international bodies, local NGO’s, the police and the general public about the actual number of deaths and serious injuries happening on the network. TRL will use its expertise, from leading projects throughout the world, to identify opportunities to improve data collection, allowing appropriate evidence to be taken into consideration when planning and designing the road network. Additionally, TRL will support the roll out of a crash data management system to provide evidence-based planning and design of the road network.

“TRL has a long history of researching the causes of crashes and the factors that contribute to them that has saved lives the world over”, says TRL’s CEO Paul Campion. “Coupled with our long experience of developing manuals for many countries, taking into consideration the local conditions, our work in Bangladesh will help authorities to identify key risks on the network from the crash data and through an improved audit process support the RHD team on solutions to increase road safety,” he concludes.

“Our work with TRL will improve our understanding of the causes of crashes and enable more effective measures to be put in place to prevent them,” says RHD Project Director Fazlul Karim. “We know the project will make a significant contribution to reducing the number of crashes and casualties on our roads. Amongst other needs, identifying bottlenecks and roadblocks in various areas of road safety in Bangladesh will help us determine the crash rates and their severity, calculate the fatality rate, and as a consequence, design the required safety measures,” he finishes.

Bangladesh has a National Road Safety Strategy Action Plan with the vision of achieving a 50% reduction in road crash fatalities by 2030. Calculating the fatality rate and designing safe roads will bring the country closer to its goal of systematically adding road safety considerations into its network development.