Practice Of Road Safety Measures Among Kenyatta And United States International University Students In Nairobi County, Kenya

Each year road traffic accidents (RTAs) account for 1.24 million fatalities and 20 to 50 million injuries worldwide. Over (90%) of this fatalities occur in low and middle income countries (LMIC). In particular, Kenya losses at least ten people daily to road traffic accidents. Vulnerable road users including university students account for over half of these fatalities. Several strategies have been employed to curb the rising cases of RTAs; unfortunately they have lacked local input due to scarce or unavailable data. Therefore this study sought to assess the practice of road safety measures among Kenyatta University (KU) and United States International University (USIU) students in Nairobi County. Crosssectional descriptive study design was employed for this study. Data was collected using structured questionnaire, focused group discussion (FGD) and observation checklists. The study recruited 429 undergraduate students aged between 18 to 45 years after the initial sample of 384 students had been exposed to weighted sampling. Five departments in KU and three in USIU were included in this study. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS Version 20, while qualitative data was organized and analyzed thematically. Hypothesis testing was done using Chi-square and Correlation coefficient. A p-value of < 0.05 was considered significant. Overall 299 (69.7%) respondents displayed good practice of road safety measures, 330 (76.9%) respondents had adequate knowledge of road safety and a strong positive correlation with practice of road safety measures; Pearson’s r(429) = 0.128**, p = 0.008, 302 (70.4%) respondents displayed positive attitude towards road safety measures with a significant positive correlation with practice; Pearson’s r (429) = 0.281**, p = 0.001 and finally, Residence, Course undertaking and University attending were found to be significant with practice of road safety; χ² (1) = 11.078, p = 0.001, χ² (1) = 9.207, p = 0.002 and χ² (1) = 15.529, p = 0.001 respectively. In conclusion there was a clear relationship between knowledge, attitude, sociodemographic characteristics (SDC) and resultant practice of road safety measures among the study group. Therefore the study recommends that National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) in collaboration with Ministry of Education (MoE) and Ministry of Transport (MoT) introduces road safety education all in learning institutions to help improve more on practice of road safety; work closely with universities in sharing road safety knowledge amongst them; incorporate behavior change communication (BCC) in interventions on road safety and consider sociodemographic characteristics when developing road safety interventions targeting vulnerable groups including university students. The researcher proposes a similar study among other universities in Kenya to find out to what extent these results could be extrapolated; a feasibility study on how best universities could work together to improve attitudes towards road safety and a qualitative study to better understand the influence of sociodemographic characteristics on practice of road safety measures.