The Built Environment, Motorisation and Road Traffic Safety in Tanzania: Outlines of an Alternative Explanation

Abstract

This paper discusses explanations of road traffic accidents as part of a wider debate on the built environment, motorization and road traffic safety in Tanzania. It exposes the shortcomings in traditional explanations based on cultural, modernization and
systems theory approaches; and outlines an alternative explanation based on the integrated urban land use and transport use model. Interactions in the components of the model reveal that it is the dynamics in the hidden elements of the built environment, and not the behavioural faults of the underprivileged urban communities, which explain the higher rates of road traffic accidents in the large urban areas in the country. In order to curb the escalating road traffic accidents carnage in the country’s urban areas, intervention measures must target the hidden elements of the built environment.