Assessing user perception versus engineering assessment: A safe route to school in Khayelitsha

Abstract

In South Africa, over 10 million scholars walk to school every day. More than 8 million of these scholars walk a manageable distance to school. However, around 1 million scholars walk, as using a different mode (for example public transport), is too expensive, while almost 480,000 scholars have no other transport available, so walking is the only option. The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) State of Road Safety Report for 2019 reports that 21% of all pedestrian fatalities in South Africa involved children and young adults aged 19 years or younger. In this study, the authors examined the school routes at Chuma Primary School in Khayelitsha and unveiled that 93.5% of students travel to school by walking. To improve the data input for the computer application, Route2School (R2S) (an application used to assess the routes feeding a school), scholars, parents, and teachers were invited to share their perceptions regarding road safety when travelling to school. Surprisingly, the results indicated that scholars are often found to violate road safety rules, despite rating the infrastructure as safe. In this paper, the perception analysis data is compared with an infrastructure audit conducted using the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) toolkit, and specifically the star rating produced for school routes. This aims to address the discrepancy between the real safety conditions and the perceived safety by scholars. This will assist policymakers in formulating safety plans and interventions that consider the specific needs of school zones.