Community Participation in Road Safety Management: A Case Study of Thong Aen Community

Abstract

This study aims to encourage the community to pay more attention to participating in road safety management by applying relevant principles: (1) Community-based management (Bottom-up Approach), which is the people who are the participants in the policy direction and direct development processes with “context-sensitive solution design (CSD)”, (2) Empowerment, which creates the sustainability of the community, resource sharing system, voluntary, and trust, and (3) Data analysis by using the Community-based Research (CBR). The main purpose of the CBR is to encourage people in the community to deal with problems by themselves under the support of mentors. Researches that were prepared by outsiders need to be done by people in the community. The problems should be raised by people in the community to create community power in managing various problems. The goal of this project is to develop the capacity of people in the community to work on road safety management focusing on the main components of the community (schools, temples, localities) as the center. The study area is located in the Thong Aen community, Thong Aen sub-district, Inburi district, Singburi province. The result of the study was called the Thong Aen model, which will be used as a pioneer model for the development of road safety management system at the community level. The interesting issues in this model are school road safety management, junctions, crossings, creating traffic discipline, etc. In addition, this research proposed that the management of road accidents must be operated in both schemes—top-down and bottom-up approaches. This model will be pushed towards expanding its performance to other areas.