This necessitated the need to interview them using the in-depth method with the help of
an interview guide. Personal observation was used where I observed how pedestrians
cross the main road in four different localities and how vehicles respond to the road signs
especially the areas where people cross the road frequently.
Qualitative methodology is mostly based on a humanistic view, and humanistic
geographers have sought to challenge the mechanistic and objectivity approach that
characterizes positivism. According to Limb (2001), researcher and researched should be
central to the research process, stressing the need to understand the life world of
individuals and the taken for granted dimensions of experiences, the unquestioned
meanings and routine of safe and risk behaviour. I have considered that participant
observation interviews and focus group discussions and partly observations will enable
me to participate in finding out what local people believe to be risk taking behaviour and
potential courses of traffic accidents and as a team what should be done from the
grassroots perspective.
.
Habermas (1985), quoted in Flick (1998), argues that qualitative research is of specific
relevance to the study of social relations, owing to the fact of pluralization of life related
to accident risk, key expressions for this pluralization of ways of living and biographical
patterns. Dissolution of old social inequalities into the new diversity of milieus,
substructures, lifestyles and ways of living. In this study, the focus will be based on local
populations and their perception and judgement aspect of the risk of traffic accidents,
including the relationship between environment, human behaviour, vehicle and the
system of traffic laws, controls and regulations, hence it will be relevant to use qualitative
methodology because it will then justify real situation of changes and its adaptations to
social change from traditional to modernity