Brief Biography
Dr. Akmal Abdelfatah is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering in the College of Engineering at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirites. He joined the Civil Engineering Department at the American University of Sharjah (AUS) in 1999. During his service at AUS, he served as a visiting scholar at the University of Texas-Austin, University of British Colombia and Cairo University. He participated in different research projects in these universities. Before joining AUS, he gained his Ph.D. degree from the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin. His main interests include traffic operations, Intelligent Transportaion Services (ITS) applications and Dynamic Traffic Assignment.
MSCP Research
Fatality Rate in Malaysia
The use of public transit is one of the most important elements that can help the transportation system within a city to be more sustainable. One of the negative consequences of using private transportation is the increase in traffic accidents, which results in a high fatality rate in the country.
The majority of the research in the area of traffic safety considers fatality rate as an indication of the level of safety of a transportation system. Unfortunately, Malaysia has one of the highest fatality rates within its region and internationally. There are several reasons for high fatality rate in any country; however, this research is considering the impact of mode choice (i.e. the use of private transport) on fatality rate.
In general, it seems that the use of private vehicle in Malaysia has two forms; passenger cars and motorcycles. The high percentage of such types of vehicles is an indication of a low public transit share in Malaysia. This research compares the accidents and fatality rates in two cities – Johor Bahru (JB) and Kuala Lumpur (KL). The main reason for choosing these two cities is the level of development of public transportation in the two cities. The highest level of development of a public transportation system in Malaysia is in KL, while JB is still developing its public transportation system. The impact of the use of private transport on fatality rates will be examined to determine the statistical significance of the possible relationships. These statistical procedures will investigate if there is a significant difference between the trend of traffic accidents and fatalities in the two cities considered.
It is expected that the results and recommendations of this research may require developing strategies and polices to reduce the use of private vehicles.