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Street-Level Bureaucratic Discretion and Road Safety Policy Outcomes: An Examination of Policy Instruments Prioritization by Traffic Police Officers in Nairobi, Kenya

Zedekiah Sidha1*, Justine Magutu2, Taji Shivachi1

This paper examines the effect of street-level bureaucratic discretion on traffic offences to target for enforcement on road safety policy outcomes. It draws on freshly collected data from 864 road users, 317 traffic enforcement officers, and structural observation and accident records in Nairobi Kenya. Bureaucratic discretion is measured using the number of safety checks and arrest by traffic offence category. Indicators for policy outcomes are safety checks and arrest disaggregated by offence type. It observes that those offences mostly checked at the safety checkpoints are different from those that are frequently violated. Similar, traffic offences responsible for most accidents are different from those for which most road users are arrested. It concludes that police do not base their enforcement on either seriousness or repeatability of the offence and thus undermines road safety policy outcomes. The findings have implications on street level bureaucratic theory, road safety policymaking and implementation practice.