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Towards Safer Bus Transport in Developing Countries: Geospatial Analysis of Bus Crashes on an Intercity Highway in Ghana

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Abstract

In low- and middle-income countries, approximately 70% of inter-city trips are by buses but are characterised by rampant crashes. So far, there is scarce research on the spatial characteristics of bus crashes on specific highways. This paper contributes a geospatial analysis of bus crashes along the Accra-Kumasi highway in Ghana, where 53% of crashes involved buses (2236 bus crashes in 363 crash locations along the 243 km highway). Crash locations, trends, and geospatial relationships were geolocated and analysed using descriptive statistics and heatmaps. Bus crashes occurred mainly in the catchment areas of Accra and Kumasi. Along the highway, crashes were predominant: (1) at straight road sections and curves, (2) near dense settlements, (3) around vehicle service stations such as mechanic shops and fuel filling stations, and (4) in the afternoon under clear weather conditions. The major causes of bus crashes are driver inattention, excess speeding, lane-changing, and car-following behaviour. The minor causes are driver inexperience, poor road signage, improper turning, and fatigue. Most crashes result from rear-ended and head-on collisions. Possible countermeasures include the expansion of the road lanes, installing bus surveillance technologies, specialised warning signs near crash-prone locations, and increased police monitoring and regulatory enforcement. Findings and proposed countermeasures are helpful to all low- and middle-income countries having rampant intercity and highway bus crashes.

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Data availability

The dataset is available upon request to the first author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering of the Ministry of Education, Tongji University, 4800 Cao’an Road, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Philip Kofi Alimo & Abrha Asmelash

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Sunyani Technical University, Sunyani, Ghana

    Stephen Agyeman

  3. School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Stephen Agyeman

  4. UNEP-Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development (IESD), Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai, 200092, People’s Republic of China

    George Lartey-Young

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  1. Philip Kofi Alimo
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  2. Abrha Asmelash
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Contributions

PKA: conceptualization, data curation; formal analysis; investigation; methodology; writing—original draft; editing; final draft preparation. AA: data curation; formal analysis; investigation; methodology; final draft preparation. SA: investigation; methodology; final draft preparation. GLartey-Y: editing; final draft preparation. All authors approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Philip Kofi Alimo.

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Alimo, P.K., Asmelash, A., Agyeman, S. et al. Towards Safer Bus Transport in Developing Countries: Geospatial Analysis of Bus Crashes on an Intercity Highway in Ghana. Transp. in Dev. Econ. 9, 17 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40890-023-00187-6

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