Riding Tendencies Contributing to Emergence of Accidents in Commercial Motorcycles and Their Associated Factors: Case of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania

The research on land transport contributes to the efforts made by nations to promote road safety.This paper investigates tendencies that contribute to the emergence of accidents involving commercial motorcycles due to human errors in urban.Specifically, it analyses the riding tendencies leading to accidents and their associated factors.The data were collected through observation, documentary review and focus group discussion along Morogoro road, specifically at Ubungo and Fire junctions.The findings revealed 19 risky riding tendencies of commercial motorcycle riders.The tendencies were grouped into errors related to cognitive, performance and decision-making.The tendencies related to cognitive errors were found to contribute to most of the accidents constituting 42.1% while the tendencies related to decision-making errors were found to have the least contribution to the emergence of accidents by only 26.3%.Five factors were found to account for the commercial motorcycle riders' risky tendencies, namely riding without training, a lack of familiarity with in-street roads, inadequate enforcement of the existing road rules, corruption of the police officers, and riding time pressure.Given the fact that most of the risky riding tendencies are related to cognitive errors, we recommend that all motorcycle riders be trained, with emphasis on development of cognitive abilities to raise their road awareness so as to reduce errors that lead to accidents.Also, a genuine licensing system has to be established.