Car users’ perspective on motorcyclists on urban roads in Colombo

Abstract

Roads are a shared space and inclusivity is vital for ensuring that all road users have equal rights to use roads. Safety comes first whoever uses roads and user behavior is one of the prime areas to be considered in ensuring road safety. Road accidents have become a global health issue and amongst accidents, motorbike accidents rank the highest, and the situation in Sri Lanka is particularly critical with increased numbers of accidents. This research tries to emphasize on using cognitive approaches as a pre-crash cure to ensure road safety by examining the car users’ perspective on motorcyclists on urban roads in Colombo. This research is entirely based on primary data and 50 respondents including 30 men and 20 women were randomly selected as the sample for the questionnaire survey and unstructured interviews. Content analysis grids were used to analyze the data. According to the results, a majority of the car users (85%) have developed negative attitudes towards the motor cyclists’ behaviors such as weaving around cars, overtaking in blind spots and occupying the road space at color lights during traffic jam. Their behaviour is more challenging for women when compared with males, and for new drivers. Further, annoying travel experiences owing to bikers contributing to jamming conditions are not considered as mentally healthy by both parties (98%-females and 70%-males). On the other hand, the reactions of the car users to the motor cyclists are unhealthy for all road users and the environment as horning is the reaction of more than 85% of the car users against bikers’ behaviours. The output of this research will be useful in policy making related to making road spaces more user friendly to ensure safety and well-being of the country since this area poses a challenge to planning authorities and policy makers.