A comprehensive study on the major causes of road accidents in developing nations.

1. ROAD SAFETY IN DEVELOPING NATIONS
The main objective of this project was to undertake a comprehensive study on the major
causes of road accidents in some developing countries of interest. A proper identification of
these critical causes would save lives as well as provide the respective government agencies
and stakeholders with the necessary information to improve their planning and budget
efficiencies. This study considered accident data for Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa for a
period of 8 years (2003-2010). The available data was used to develop some statistical and
mathematical models using Linear, Multiple Regression, Correlation Analysis, Poisson and
Negative Binomial Distributions to understand the nature and the relationships between the
critical causes of road accidents in these countries.
It was found that poor design decisions such as improper road layout, random location of
junctions within the road segments and insufficient road furniture are highly correlated with
the number of fatalities. These critical factors were statistically significant with a p-value
range (0.000-0.049). Furthermore, changes in GDP per capita, human population and
vehicular conditions were also significant and correlated with fatalities. Hence, as the GDP
per capita of these countries increases, the vehicular and road infrastructure conditions are
improved. However, the increasing number of fatalities as found in this study clearly defines
the deficiencies in the quality of Highway engineering, traffic enforcement and management
in these countries considered. Thus, urgent road safety improvement measures have been
recommended to these Nations using the UK road safety models.