THE CAUSES OF ROAD TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS AND COUNTERMEASURES: CASE STUDY OF SHELE TO GERRESE ROAD

Abstract

Road traffic accidents (RTAs) constitute major health, economic, and developmental challenges of developing countries, especially adversely affected sub Saharan African Countries. In Ethiopia, the condition has been aggravated even more as compared with other developing countries. The objective of the study to assess causes of road accidents and to propose counter measures. Raw data, covers three years period of 2015 to 2017 GC, were used. The overall data were collected from Traffic Police Bureaus and the Wereda’s Road and Transport Offices of Gamo Gofa zone, Southern National and Nationalities People Regional State (SNNPRS). In order to collect the data and ensure proper compilation, a road traffic accident form was designed and compiled using excel sheet so as to ascertain proper analysis. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches is used to assess and investigate the causes behind the road traffic accident. To identify the cause of traffic accidents and identify the foremost determinants of accidents, the accident features were analyzed using different variables related to the cause of traffic accident along with the collected data. Inferential statistics (Chi-Square test with p-value below 0.05) was used to analyze the data and interpret the results. The findings of the study identified the cause of traffic accident using different variables such as responsible driver age and sex, hours of the day, collision types, crash severity, crash location and types of accident vehicles for the crash occurrence. With regard, results showed that the occurrence of road traffic accidents within the study area significantly increased in each year mostly associated with the accident caused by motor cycles and minibuses. The study also identified that the cause of road traffic accident are male drivers in the age categories of 18 to 35 years old. Accordingly, the study to reduce the occurrence of accident and to improve traffic safety of the road, effective countermeasures are provided to be implemented to save lives of drivers, passengers and pedestrian in the future.