INFLUENCE OF MOTOR VEHICLE INSPECTIONS ON ROAD SAFETY PROJECTS PERFORMANCE IN KENYA

Abstract

The road safety in Kenyan roads and especially in relations to the public road safety continues to be of concern to the government and other diverse stakeholders. The number of road fatalities were 1, 344 pedestrians, 339 drivers, 668 passengers, 637 motor cycle fatalities, and 69 pedal cyclists in 2015. These numbers illustrates the state of road safety in Kenya. The country continues to face relatively high cases of accidents and fatalities despite the formation of NTSA. This study sought to examine the influence of motor vehicle inspections on road safety projects performance in Kenya. The study examined which motor vehicle inspection aspects on average played a significant role in road safety projects, that is, among state of tyres, insurance, number of passengers ferried, roadworthiness of motor vehicle, and presence of seat belts. In this context, the mean of the various metrics was generated. In interrogating the influence of the motor vehicle inspection metrics on road safety, on average the respondents tended to agree that they all have an influence as the mean scores of all the metrics on motor vehicle inspection were in the range of 3.5< μ ≤4.5. The standard deviations for state of tyres, number of passengers ferried, roadworthiness of motor vehicle, and presence of seat were moderately distributed around the mean which implied that there was moderate consensus 0.5<σx ≤1 among the respondents each had an influence on road safety projects. The standard deviation of insurance was 1.017 meaning the responses were widely distributed around the mean which indicated there was no consensus (σx >1) on whether the insurance aspect of motor vehicle inspection had an influence on performance of road safety projects. The study recommended that Motor Vehicle inspection should be enforced in order to improve on the roadworthiness of motor vehicles on the road.