1.

Introduction
1.1. Background of The Community Service
The transport industry highly impacted the development of a country since every activity of the
people of the country related to transporting from one place to another for a different purpose.
People could make the trip for a different reason and according to the purpose of the trip, trips
can be classified into different categories and among them, the trip may work trip, recreational
trip, and so on. If the people way of life mainly depends on trips made so the concerned bodies
need to pay attention to the transport facilities. The more we provide a good (comfortable),
economic and safe transport service results in more work trips and other trips which leads more
economic flow. The more economic flow directly related to the development of the country.

We Ethiopian as a city are not able to provide a safe, economic and comfortable transport service
for the people and this is due to a lot of reasons. Among the reasons the main limiting factor not
to provide that services are a limited budget. In some places (rural) there are minimum scale
comfortable roads that satisfy the only accessibility requirement without an available vehicle and
in others, there is a road and also vehicle but there is an issue of comfort and mainly safety. Most
people can compromise their comfort just to work and for the sake of a better future but they will
not their safety. Due to this reason, many people limit their movement and this has a great impact
on the development of the country. Moreover, most of the people who face a safety issue (road
traffic accidents) are young who play a great role in the future of the countries development.

Road traffic accidents are one of the main issues the developing countries and one of the leading
killers in this region. According to research done by WHO in the world over

 1.3 million people died in a year

 50 million injuries
 3500 people died in a year

And as a result of this developing countries lose up to 4% of their GDP. Among the people who
died due to road traffic accidents, 92% of them are from low and middle-income countries. So
countries like Ethiopia which is categorized under low-income country need to pay a lot of
attention to this severe problem. By nature, accidents can’t be prevented from happening but we
can minimize the no of the accident occurred as well as their magnitude or severity. According to
research, there are a lot of methods that help to mitigate road traffic accidents and among those
methods, the 3E method is the most common and effective one. 3E stands for

 Engineering Method
 Enforcement Method
 Education method

The engineering method is one of the most effective methods to reduce road traffic accidents by
proposing some engineering solutions that potentially reduce road traffic accidents. There are
different approaches used in this method according to the cause of road traffic accidents. The
cause of road traffic accident classified into three categories and these are

 Human Factor
 Vehicle Factor
 Road and Environment Factor

Among those three factors, Road and Environment factor needs engineering solution. Accidents
caused due to the road and environmental problems may be related to the bad design of the road,
insufficient provision of stopping sight distance, and absence of lane markings, and roadside
traffic signs, and these kinds of the problem needs clear engineering solution. And if we can
provide those lane markings and roadside traffic signs we can minimize the occurrence and
magnitude of road traffic accidents to the minimum level.

Education methods mainly focus on creating awareness regarding concerned bodies and this
includes government concerned bodies and the people)

Since South Gonder Zone is one of the zones in the Amhara region which has registered
h[CITATION Ama19 \l 1033 ] high road traffic accident in the Amhara region, we need to pay a lot
of attention. According to [CITATION Ama19 \l 1033 ] a total of 811 different types of road traffic
accidents have happened from (2007 to 2011 EC) and among those accidents, 425 are fatal
accidents, 110 major injuries, 67 minor injuries, and 209 property damage are accidents. If we
look deeply to those accidents most of the accident happened in this region is fatal and 26.76%
of the accident happened due to overturning, 35.02% hit pedestrians, 24.04% is head-on collision
and the remaining 14.8% is due to other reasons. So from the research, we can see that there is a
need for Engineering and Education mitigation methods.
So this is why we the community of Debre Tabor university needs to focus on those methods and
in the last year community service, we already reach to the government concerned bodies who
are traffic polices and transport bureau officers and create awareness regarding all the causes and
mitigation methods of road traffic accidents and give direction to the basic tasks they need to do
which is creating awareness and also enforcement of the law. Since enforcement of the law is
their major responsibility but we believe we can do something regarding the engineering
methods and also the Education method which is creating awareness regarding road traffic
accidents.

1.2. Community Service Focus Area

So in this community service, we mainly focus on these two mitigation methods and these are

A. Engineering Mitigation Method

B. Educational Mitigation Method

1.2.1. Engineering Method

Engineering methods are one of the road traffic accidents mitigation methods which are expected
from road and traffic Engineers. We the academic staff of Debre Tabor University believe that
we can work on solving Engineering related problems and in this community service, we want to
work on the following task by identifying blackspot areas which are the major road traffic
accident occurring locations.

1. Lane Marking
2. Road Side Traffic Signs
3. Provision of adequate stopping sight distance

Lane Marking

Lane marking is necessary needs to be applied especially around school and at the location
where there is a road crossing. So in this community service, we will do lane marking for
selected critical locations of roads of the south Gondar zone. Since lane marking is effective in
urban areas due to the high concentration and mobility of the population, we mainly want to
work on urban areas of the south Gondar zone.

Road Side Traffic Signs

Traffic signs are signs which are put on side of the road and those signs provide the necessary
information to the driver about the road condition, the allowed speed, and some necessary
locations like a motel, hotel, Hospital, School, and Fuel station locations and by providing traffic
signs which mainly contribute to the reduction of road traffic accident ( Warning Traffic Signs).
So in this community service depending on the available budget potentially release from the
university we will try to put traffic signs at the selected most severe road traffic accident
locations.

Provision of Adequate Stopping Sight Distance

One of the main causes of head-on collision road traffic accidents is the provision of insufficient
stopping sight distance especially at horizontal and vertical alignments and insufficient stopping
sight distance may be occurred due to a lot of reasons those are

 Design error
 Planting large trees along the road

In this community service, we are going to focus on removing plants growing along the roadside
and preventing the sight distance provided in the design after checking whether it prevents or
not.

1.2.2. Educational Method

Creating awareness regarding road traffic accidents is the main way of preventing road traffic
accidents and if a country works on creating awareness, there is a probability of reducing road
traffic accidents by 48%. Even if creating awareness is one of the top ways for the reduction of
road traffic accidents, Ethiopia (South Gondar Zone) is not focusing on this (not paying the
attention needed). So as the community of the university we need to focus on creating awareness
among the community and one way of doing this is by using mini media facilities. We believe to
reach the community we need to address some selected addresses and if we are able to reach the
primary and secondary school in the zone and try to give training to the student traffic police and
able to initiate them to engage in the prevention of road traffic accident, we can reduce road
traffic accident and can reach the whole community.

So in this community service, we will focus on training the student traffic policies and able to
initiate them. We all know that in the previous time, there were strong student traffic police
clubs at school. However, nowadays those clubs are not working aggressively so we will try to
strengthen those clubs in south Gondar and also train them about road traffic accidents.

1.2.3. Delivery of The Community Service

The community service will be done in two phases during the year 2014 and Phase One will
mainly focus on two basic things

 Creating awareness to the community

 Training student traffic policies regarding a road traffic accident

Phase two will mainly focus on proposing and implementing Engineering solutions that will
have a greater role in the reduction of road traffic accidents. This phase will mainly focus on

 Marking lane marking for pedestrian road crossings

 Putting new roadside traffic signs at critical locations
 Removing roadside objects which will reduce stopping sight distance.

2. The Goal of the Community Service

Road traffic accident is one of the major problems we are facing as a community of the south
Gondar zone. However, it is not getting the attention needed for the problem and due to this, we
need to have a goal to prevent road traffic accidents and act aggressively to prevent it. The goal
of the community service to reduce the road traffic accident occurring in the south Gondar zone
using proposing engineering solutions and also creating awareness in the community of the south
Gondar zone.

3. The objective of The Community Service

3.1. General Objective
The general objective of the community service is

 To reduce the number and severity of road traffic accidents using

Engineering and Educational method in South Gondar Zone
 3.2. Specific Objective
The specific objective of the community service is

 To mark road marking at pedestrian crossing locations

 To put roadside traffic signs at the most critical locations of the road
 To check and correct the stopping sight distance at the road
 To create awareness in the community
 To train student traffic policies and strengthen student traffic police
clubs

4. Expected Results
At the end of the community service, we believe we will have some positive results which will
play a greater role in the reduction of the community result. Since providing Engineering
solutions and also creating awareness within the community service one of the major solutions
for minimizing road traffic accidents so at the end of the community service we expect the
following results.

 There will be a reduction of pedestrians crashed by a vehicle in urban and

rural areas due to zebra road marking for pedestrian crossing
 The head-to-head collision between vehicles due to insufficient stopping sight
distance will reduce significantly
 The community will be able to challenge the drivers while drivers are
speeding beyond the design speed
 The community will have awareness about the impact of road traffic accident
 The community will identify which side of the road they should use while
walking and where to cross the road.

5. Rough Estimate of Budget

Costs you need to include

1. Lane Marking (Zebra crossing at different urban areas)

2. Roadside traffic sign at rural roads
3. Cost for the training of student traffic polices
4. Cost for creating awareness using vehicle and speaker at urban areas
5. …..