FATAL INJURY CRASH DATA ANALYSIS AND DIRECTIONS TO REVERSE THE GROWING RATE OF ROAD TRAFFIC RELATED FATALITY IN ADDIS ABABA
Author/s
JIREGNA HIRPA (M.SC)
Abstract
Road traffic injury has become one of the major world health problems. Each year 1.2 million people are killed and 50 million people are injured in road traffic crush. According to Addis Ababa Police Commission report, on average 391 people have lost their life each year in Addis Ababa streets for the past three years. Based on World Health Organization (WHO) estimate for Ethiopia, the actual number of road traffic related fatalities in Addis Ababa could be much higher that the reported amount, by about 6.4 times, as it also considers the people died after the scene and underreporting. This makes the number of fatalities in Addis Ababa around 2502, in a year. It has shown 6 percent on average during the past 6 years. In order to tackle this problem, it requires understanding the contributing factors by studying the crush history of the city to provide evidence based solution. However, the crush data of the city doesn’t provide important information about the crushes that can be used to solve the problem. In this study, it is tried to fill the gap by carefully analyzing the available information to find out the major causes of crush and its countermeasures. It is found out that 68 percent of fatalities are pedestrians. Majority of the fatal crushes are caused by a vehicle moving at high speed striking a pedestrian at road segments (out of junctions). About half of fatal crushes happen on major median divided roads. More than half of fatalities were caused by light vehicles. Based on the findings of the analysis, it is concluded that the main contributing factors for road traffic fatal crush in Addis Ababa city are speeding, lack of necessary pedestrian facilities and drinking and driving. Therefore, to reverse the growing rate of road traffic fatalities in Addis Ababa City, speed and blood alcohol content (BAC) control; and provision of pedestrian facilities that assure safety of pedestrians must be given prime attention. In order to assist concerned bodies, tackle the road traffic crush strategically, a map that shows high fatal crush frequency locations is prepared for Addis Ababa City by using ArcGIS software. Specific location descriptions given by traffic police for each fatal crush locations are used to extract geographical coordinates from Google Earth. At the end, focus areas and directions to improve road traffic safety are provided for the City based on the data analysis result.