Preface

On a fateful day, 12 February 2015, Fredrick Muguro did not resume his usual business after dropping his kid at Buruburu Primary School, Nairobi Kenya. He was knocked down from his motorcycle and run over by a Matatu operator. In his last moments, he was pleading with bystanders to take him to hospital, which never happened. Road accidents like this are all too common in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa. Breadwinners' lives are cut short in tragic incidences, some of which could have been avoided. This work, looking at transport issues in Kenya, is an attempt to, (1) underscore the plight of millions who have suffered through lost livelihoods, disabilities, and ultimately lost lives, and (2) propose a solution, that can save at least a life that would needlessly be another statistic in countries road traffic fatality counts.

The current work, emerging from a doctoral dissertation, is a phenomenological treatise of transportation issues that grip Kenya’s general transport, emphasising public transportation. The issues discussed are nevertheless not unique to Kenya as the general practices and experiences resonate with all African countries. At the heart of the book's authorship is to point stakeholders (policymakers and any interested party) and researchers (grad. students, research firms) to the disproportionately huge issues that African countries have to grapple with to streamline the transport sector. That is, the work offers insights into Kenya’s (and by extension, most African countries) transport situation as well as informs policy refinement and possible venture/investment opportunities.

From global metrics, African countries have the highest fatality index ranging from 25-34 per quota from Road Traffic Accidents (RTA). The World Health Organization estimates Kenya’s fatality rate due to RTA at 28 per quota. Despite this, research towards RTA is minimal or insufficient compared to the impacts and trends in the country. Chief among the issues compiling the RTA challenge is the availability of traffic-related data. The country faces incomplete RTA data capturing, hindering effective planning and policy adjustments to curb the menace. To overcome the issue, the work employed data mining techniques from transportation agencies' statistical abstracts and user-generated sources to formulate a comprehensive view of the road traffic situation in the country.

The work collected all publicly available statistical abstract reports from the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA), the body overseeing and formulating transportation policies in Kenya, between 2015 and 2021. The objective is to assess the trends of road incidents to uncover prevalence concerning time, locality, affected groups, and main sources of collision and, most importantly, formulate a generalised causative agency from the reported data. Overall, police-reported data only touches on major incidents (accidents) since that is when motorists involve authorities; minor collisions and traffic flow go undocumented. Prevailing conditions of the traffic incidents (e.g., drunk drivers) are unreported with a focus on the numerical reports (e.g., number of fatalities). As such, alternative data mining methods become necessary to describe traffic policies and culture exhaustively with unbiased user-generated content. To this end, the study gathered 1,000,000+ traffic-related tweets describing Kenyan traffic for the same period (2015 – 2021) and performed natural language processing (NLP) and quantitative study of the data.

From the data analysis using NLP, the identified causes of fatalities point to preventable driver errors. Further, as reported through user-generated data, the main challenge is traffic rule observance in various aspects of road monitoring. As such, the most reasonable course of action would be to reform/enhance policing and road monitoring efforts in the country. The main takeaways of the study are:

1. Road safety concerns: Traffic accidents were identified as a major issue, with commuters reporting a lack of proper infrastructure and inadequate law enforcement as contributing factors.
2. Lack of infrastructure: Poor infrastructure was identified as a major challenge, exacerbated by prevailing weather patterns like rains and property damage to established infrastructure.
3. Inefficient policing, regulations, and enforcement: Commuters reported that regulations and laws were not being enforced effectively, leading to issues such as overloading of vehicles and unsafe driving practices.
4. Vandalism and security issues: Commuters, motorists, and general road users reported incidents of theft and harassment, as well as a general sense of insecurity on the roads, making many users feel unsafe and vulnerable.
5. Disaster preparedness: Commuters reported that there were no proper emergency protocols and that transport providers were ill-prepared to handle emergencies.
6. Poor passenger experience: Commuters/road users reported that the passenger service provided by public service vehicle operators was often poor, with constant complaints touching on noise pollution, recklessness, blatant disregard of traffic rules, and general conduct.
7. Lack of reliable and punctual services: Commuters reported frequent delays, congestion, improper redirection of traffic, and or cancellations of means of transportation, leading to significant inconvenience and wasted time.
8. Inadequate data collection: Incomplete data collection was identified as a problem, making it difficult to assess the situation and develop effective solutions accurately. A complimentary source of data (crowdsourced data) was adopted to formulate the study and draw conclusions.

The work recommends fortification of road policing, enhancement in traffic control, and data collection in the face of incidents to aid in modelling and analysis for future planning.

The work, which blended structured and unstructured data, points to the utility of data mining, which would greatly benefit traffic research, particularly African-based studies, that suffer from data inadequacy. The hope is that the investigation and recommendations contained in the book would inform and sensitise policymakers and the greater public on the effects of driving behaviour and tendencies.

The hope is that the investigation and recommendations contained in the book would inform and sensitize policymakers and the greater public on the effects of driving behavior and tendencies.