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Trauma Report

Success Story

An innovative study funded by Fogarty focused on better traffic control measures to improve compliance with the posted speed limits in Ghana. For years, Ghanian safety advocates had been demanding better traffic safety measures, including increased speed controls. Until recently, however, these measures had been resisted, or implemented slowly and inefficiently. In 2006, Fogarty scholar James Damsere-Derry carried out a research project measuring vehicle speeds in several locations along the Accra-Kumasi road. His study showed extremely low compliance with the posted speed limit in built-up areas, where many pedestrian injuries and deaths occurred. Damsere-Derry also demonstrated that the mean speed was about twice the speed limit and that 95% of vehicles exceeded the limit.

The study results gained national attention almost immediately. In addition to being published in the scientific journal Traffic Injury Prevention, the results of Damsere-Derry's study were covered extensively by Ghanian media. As a result, since 2007, Ghana has witnessed a tremendous increase in traffic-calming infrastructural changes built into sections of two of Ghana's most highly-traveled roads, and traffic circles and speed bumps added to roadways that pass through densely populated areas. The speed control changes made to the infrastructure in 2007 and 2008 were more extensive than any in Ghana's history. "These changes will be expanded to other roads soon, since their evaluation has shown both speed decline and a dramatic reduction in severe pedestrian injuries," said Damsere-Derry, who is earning his master's degree in public health at the University of Washington through his Fogarty grant.

Damsere-Derry's scientific study showing unacceptably high rates of speed on Ghana's roadways and the subsequent publicity helped to influence policymakers to quickly enact much-needed road safety modifications that had been stalled for years. Though his initial study included speed measurements on 5,000 vehicles, Damsere-Derry has since completed a broader study of 20,000 vehicles on a range of roadway conditions, which is being published in the journal Injury Control and Safety Promotion. In both studies, Damsere-Derry acknowledges the "instrumental role" of the Fogarty grant in bringing about these institutional changes.