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Identifying the causes of road traffic accidents in India: An empirical investigation
Author(s) -
Dash Devi Prasad,
Sethi Narayan,
Dash Aruna Kumar
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of public affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.221
H-Index - 20
eISSN - 1479-1854
pISSN - 1472-3891
DOI - 10.1002/pa.2038
Subject(s) - urbanization , truck , case fatality rate , transport engineering , road traffic , empirical research , geography , business , environmental health , engineering , economic growth , economics , medicine , statistics , population , mathematics , aerospace engineering
This study utilizes data for the period 2006–2015 to estimate the determinants of road fatality rates in the Indian states. We employ baseline regression, where the total traffic fatalities, total traffic injuries, rural road fatalities, and urban road fatalities are the functions of human errors in driving, weather conditions, and some control variables. This paper is exclusively focussed upon different sets of human‐driven factors in influencing the road fatality across the Indian states. Our empirical results show that reckless driving, defective motor conditions, bad weather, and reckless driving by bus, truck, and car drivers are found to cause road accidents. We further find that the increase in motorization rates and rash driving are the primary causes behind the road fatalities, and bad weather play a major role in causing road fatalities and injuries in urban areas. However, road fatalities are increasing; still, cases of under reporting, lack of proper road safety regulation, improper investigation procedures, increasing vehicle usages, and higher urbanization have made the matters quite worse in India.