Study on the effect of road infrastructure, socio-economic and demographic features on road crashes in Bangladesh

Abstract

A statistical analysis was conducted for road traffic accidents and associated casualties in Bangladesh. This was undertaken in order to assist the policy-makers to take appropriate steps to reduce the road traffic accidents and the associated casualties. District wise data (collected from Bangladesh government publications) were explored, analyzed and modeled statistically. The modeling was done by negative binomial model. Our study considered the effect of road length (both paved and unpaved), road infrastructure and several socio economic characteristics on crash frequency. A model of accident prediction was developed with the collected data. There are several significant findings in our research work. We founded that crash frequency increases due to the increase in paved road length. On the contrary, due to increase in unpaved road length the crash frequency decreases. Again it was seen that crash frequency increases due to the increase of road infrastructure. The increase in population also affects the crash frequency. It was seen that due to increase in total male population, the number of crashes increase. But for the increase in female population, crash frequency decreases. From economic point of view it was seen that, due to the increase of active male population, number of accident reduces. While for the increase in active female population, number of accident increases. Again for several economic stages (temporary insolvency, permanent insolvency, equivalent expenses etc) it was seen that crash frequency increases due to the increase of these economic stages.