Linking Road Traffic Accidents to Vehicle Population; Empirical Evidence from Ghana.

Abstract

Several road accidents in Ghana in the past have resulted in road fatalities leading to loss of lives, property, broken homes, thus leaving behind shattered families and communities, among others despite the indispensable role the road transport sector plays in the economy. This paper examined the relationship between road traffic accidents and vehicular population in Ghana using linear regression model based on time series data relating to the two variables covering a twenty (20) year period from 1991 to 2010. Empirical results showed the existence of relationship between the two variables with R=0.855 indicating a very strong positive association between them, with vehicular population accounting for 73.098% of the changes in the annual road traffic accidents in Ghana and models the relationship as Y = 7166.33 + 0.00521X, where Y is the total number of accidents and X being the number of registered vehicles. The study concludes that vehicular population should form part of policy formulation in dealing with road traffic accidents in Ghana based on the results and finally recommend among others that a legislation should be passed and strongly enforced as a matter of agency by stakeholders to deal with all over-aged vehicles, broken down and racketeering vehicles to remove them from the roads to help manage the vehicle population in the country.