You are more likely to be involved in a road accident within Nairobi, Nakuru, Kiambu, Machakos and Kakamega counties, a five-year trend shows.
Most accidents in these counties occur between 4pm and 9pm.
Counties with the next most dangerous roads are Makueni, Kisumu, Kilifi, Meru, Nyeri, Bungoma and Mombasa in that order.
According to the new analysis, road users in Kenya are safest in Wajir, Tigania, Nyahururu, Moyale, Malindi and Mandera areas in that order.
The analysis was conducted by dons from Dedan Kimathi University and Japan’s Gifu University on road accident data from the National Transport and safety Authority between 2015 and 2020.
They said high populations in some counties, paved road networks and motorised transport played a big role in the accidents. The trend indicates a worsening situation.
Between January 2015 and January 2020, there was an increase of 26 per cent and 46.5 per cent in deaths and injured persons, respectively.
“Urgent fine-tuning of policing to protect vulnerable road users as well as curb the overly decried driver behaviour is needed,” authors say in the study, published recently in the Cogent Engineering journal.
The authors are Joseph Kamau and Waweru Njeri of Dedan Kimathi University; and Minoru Sasaki and Kojiro Matsushita of Japan.
Boda bodas are largely responsible for the worsening situation.
In 2007, Kenya had fewer than 100,000 registered motorcycles—today the number stands at over 800,000, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.
Four categories were also identified as the leading causes of fatalities on roads – knocking down victims, hit-and-run, vehicle losing control and head-on collision.
The overall probability for the cause is given as 35.34 per cent prevalence in running over victims followed by 27.73 per cent for hit-and-run, 18.03 per cent for lost control, and 18.89 per cent for head-on collisions.
“All these causes point to driver errors and are preventable with proper measures,” the authors say.
The study also notes injuries and deaths from road accidents are grossly underreported in Kenya.
NTSA places the annual fatalities between 3,000 and 4,500 deaths per year since 2015.
Compared to the total population, this translates to fatality rate between 5.8 and 8.7 per 100,000 people.
“We have all reasons to question these numbers given that the global fatality rate as at 2016 was 18.2 per 100,000 with African countries most severe,” the authors say.
The reporting also lacks accident-relevant details that would enable further accident analysis.
“Details like weather conditions, road intersection and type, drivers age, drunk/speeding behaviour, vehicle category should be included for further analysis,” they said.
