Determination of the Risk Factors That Influence Occurrence Time of Traffic Accidents with Survival Analysis

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to determine risk factors that occurrence time of traffic accidents. Traffic accident occurrence time is defined as the time between a driver’s getting his/her license and having the first accident, involving death or injury between 2008–2012 and there were investigated. METHODS: This study was conducted with the Cox Regression and life tables models included among survival analysis models. Data of all 11.671 traffic accidents in Kayseri in Turkey were analyzed for the 5-yr period. RESULTS: The non-occurrence rate of traffic accidents involving injury is mostly affected by gender, age, education, number of vehicles involved in accident, road surface material, daylight, type of road, direction of road and time of the day. The non-occurrence rate of fatal traffic accident duration is mostly affected by gender, age, education, daylight and horizontal alignment. The rate of having an accident involving death or injury after getting driver’s license is 30.3% in the first 5 yr, it is 50.1% in the first 10 yr and 91.7% in 25 yr. CONCLUSION: As the non-occurrence time increases, occurrence of accidents in earlier years will decrease. In other words, the number of accidents in earlier years will be lower. This will cause a decrease in the number of accidents in total.