Road traffic crash experience among commercial motorcyclists in Kigali, Rwanda

Abstract

Objective: Road traffic injuries (RTI) cause ∼1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries annually, disproportionately occurring in low- and middle-income countries. Although policy changes and infrastructural developments have continued to contribute to the decrease in RTI-related deaths, limited studies have investigated the relationship between motorcycle taxi driver behaviors and RTIs in Rwanda. This study aims to describe the safety behaviors of commercial motorcyclists in Kigali, Rwanda.

Methods: We surveyed 609 commercial motorcyclists in January 2014 then conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the results, including descriptive and bivariate logistic regression analyses.

Results: We found that 38.7% of surveyed motorcycle drivers experienced a crash during their lifetime, of which, more than half (n = 134, 56.8%) suffered injuries. Of all injuries, 38.8% (n = 52) resulted in hospitalization, and 14.2% (n = 19) in disability. Among motorcyclists, 100% reported always wearing a helmet, 99% reported always wearing a chin strap, and 98.8% reported always having a passenger helmet. There was an association between sustaining a crash and believing that helmets (p = 0.08) and chin straps (p = 0.05) reduced crash risk.

Conclusions: Rwandan commercial motorcyclists demonstrate generally proper safety behaviors, but remain a high-risk occupational group. Road safety policy initiatives have been effective in changing driver behavior regardless of driver safety beliefs.

Keywords:

• Road traffic injury
• Rwanda
• motorcycle
• behavior
• safety

Acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible without the collaboration and support of our Rwandan data collection team and the Rwandan Federation of Motorcycle Taxi Drivers (FERWACOTAMO).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Role of authors

CAS, JRV, EK, FB and SR developed the concept of the project and designed the study. BM and IFV were responsible for the literature search for the manuscript. JRV, EK, LA, FB, SR, and CAS were responsible for the data collection and data analysis. JRV, EK, BM, LA and CAS were responsible for the analysis plan and analysis of the manuscript. JRV, EK, BM, FB, SR and CAS were responsible for the final editing and all authors approved the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge funding for this study from the Fogarty International Center (K01 TW010000-01A1 to C.S., R25 TW009887 to B.M. and E.K.) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (R25 TW009887-06S3 to B.M.). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. Additional financial support for this project was provided by the Duke Global Health Institute. Funders of this project played no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, interpretation of data, writing of this report or the decision to submit the article for publication.