Abstract—This paper discusses the adopted methodology to assess the traffic safety performance measures of the school buses in the UAE. It describes the process of designing two types of surveys, sampling, and analysis of the results using descriptive statistical analysis. The first users’ survey is designed to determine the degree of implementation of the applied performance measures in school buses from the users’ viewpoint. The target groups of the second survey are the school administrators. In this survey, the records of the traffic accident that school buses had been involved in, in the last five years, were collected. The study covers many regions in the country. Both surveys were distributed between public and private schools that cover different educational levels (Kindergarten, Primary schools, Preparatory schools, and High schools). The traffic safety performance was particularly assessed using three distinctive performance measures; the rate per bus, the rate per bus user, and the rate per student. The performance measures were compared with the counter measures in USA and Canada. The paper provides a summary of the findings and outcomes. In addition, a list of recommendations is suggested to improve the traffic safety performance of the school buses in the UAE.
Index Terms—School bus, traffic accident, safety performance.
N. B. Al Naser is with the Roadway Transportation and Traffic Safety Research Center (RTTSRC), Faculty of Engineering at United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, UAE (e-mail: Nada_AlNaser@uaeu.ac.ae).
Y. E. Hawas was with University of Texas at Austin as a research associate between 1995 till 1998. He is now with Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering at United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, UAE (e-mail: y.hawas@uaeu.ac.ae).
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Cite: Nada B. Al Naser and Yaser E. Hawas, "Assessment of Traffic Safety Performance of School Buses in UAE,"
International Journal of Engineering and Technology vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 139-143, 2012.
