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Effectiveness of an improved road safety policy in Ethiopia: an interrupted time series study

BACKGROUND: In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in implementing road safety policy by different low income countries. However; the evidence is scarce on its success in the reduction of crashes, injuries and deaths. This study was conducted to assess whether road crashes, injuries...

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Autores principales: Abegaz, Teferi, Berhane, Yemane, Worku, Alemayehu, Assrat, Abebe
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4052816/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24886220
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-539
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author Abegaz, Teferi
Berhane, Yemane
Worku, Alemayehu
Assrat, Abebe
author_facet Abegaz, Teferi
Berhane, Yemane
Worku, Alemayehu
Assrat, Abebe
author_sort Abegaz, Teferi
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in implementing road safety policy by different low income countries. However; the evidence is scarce on its success in the reduction of crashes, injuries and deaths. This study was conducted to assess whether road crashes, injuries and fatalities was reduced following the road safety regulation introduced as of September 2007 by Oromia Regional State Transport Bureau. METHODS: Routine road traffic accident data for the year 2002-2011were collected from sixteen traffic police offices. Data on average daily vehicle flow was obtained from the Ethiopian Road Authority. Interrupted time series design using segmented linear regression model was applied to estimate the effect of an improved road safety policy. RESULTS: A total of 4,053 crashes occurred on Addis Ababa - Adama/Hawassa main road. Of these crashes, almost half 46.4% (1,880) were property damage, 29.4% (1,193) were fatal and 24.2% (980) injury crashes, resulting 1,392 fatalities and 1,749 injuries. There were statistically significant reductions in non-injury crashes and deaths. Non-injury crash was reduced by 19% and fatality by 12.4% in the first year of implementing the revised transport safety regulation. CONCLUSION: Although revised road safety policy helped in reducing motor vehicle crashes and associated fatalities, the overall incidence rate is still very high. Further action is required to avoid unnecessary loss of lives.
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spelling pubmed-40528162014-06-20 Effectiveness of an improved road safety policy in Ethiopia: an interrupted time series study Abegaz, Teferi Berhane, Yemane Worku, Alemayehu Assrat, Abebe BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in implementing road safety policy by different low income countries. However; the evidence is scarce on its success in the reduction of crashes, injuries and deaths. This study was conducted to assess whether road crashes, injuries and fatalities was reduced following the road safety regulation introduced as of September 2007 by Oromia Regional State Transport Bureau. METHODS: Routine road traffic accident data for the year 2002-2011were collected from sixteen traffic police offices. Data on average daily vehicle flow was obtained from the Ethiopian Road Authority. Interrupted time series design using segmented linear regression model was applied to estimate the effect of an improved road safety policy. RESULTS: A total of 4,053 crashes occurred on Addis Ababa - Adama/Hawassa main road. Of these crashes, almost half 46.4% (1,880) were property damage, 29.4% (1,193) were fatal and 24.2% (980) injury crashes, resulting 1,392 fatalities and 1,749 injuries. There were statistically significant reductions in non-injury crashes and deaths. Non-injury crash was reduced by 19% and fatality by 12.4% in the first year of implementing the revised transport safety regulation. CONCLUSION: Although revised road safety policy helped in reducing motor vehicle crashes and associated fatalities, the overall incidence rate is still very high. Further action is required to avoid unnecessary loss of lives. BioMed Central 2014-05-31 /pmc/articles/PMC4052816/ /pubmed/24886220 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-539 Text en Copyright © 2014 Abegaz et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Abegaz, Teferi
Berhane, Yemane
Worku, Alemayehu
Assrat, Abebe
Effectiveness of an improved road safety policy in Ethiopia: an interrupted time series study
title Effectiveness of an improved road safety policy in Ethiopia: an interrupted time series study
title_full Effectiveness of an improved road safety policy in Ethiopia: an interrupted time series study
title_fullStr Effectiveness of an improved road safety policy in Ethiopia: an interrupted time series study
title_full_unstemmed Effectiveness of an improved road safety policy in Ethiopia: an interrupted time series study
title_short Effectiveness of an improved road safety policy in Ethiopia: an interrupted time series study
title_sort effectiveness of an improved road safety policy in ethiopia: an interrupted time series study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4052816/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24886220
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-539
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