Modelling factors affecting the severities of injury from motor vehicle traffic crashes in Namibia using the 2009-2016 National Road Safety Council data
Motor Vehicle Traffic Crashes (MVTC) are one of the leading causes of death and disability in the world, especially in developing countries. Despite Namibia having a well- developed road network, MVTC are the third highest cause of death in the country with 23.9 per 100 000 MVTC fatality rate recorded. This study was conducted in Namibia to model factors affecting the severity of injuries from MVTC. The study purpose was to examine the effects of human, crash/accident types, environmental, vehicle types and temporal factors on the severity of injuries. A quantitative cross-sectional study based on data obtained from the National Road Safety Council (NRSC) was conducted. The study population was all the recorded MVTC resulted in either death, serious or slight injuries in Namibia from January 2009 to December 2016, with n= 21 976 cases. Approval for the study to use the said datasets was secured from the NRSC Namibia. Bivariate analysis was used to select variables for inclusion in the final model. Ordered logistic and multinomial logistic regression models were then used to assess selected variables included in the final model. Factors found to be significantly associated with fatal/serious MVTC injuries when compared with slight injuries in the fitted multinomial logit analysis were the accidents involving head on and single vehicle overturned (RR= 0.7, P<0.001), morning peak (RR= 1.5, P-value=0.002), light delivery vehicles (LDV) (RR=1.3, P<0.001), and accidents involving a single vehicle (RR= 1.2, P-value=0.002). Other factors such as avoiding objects, age, gender, weather and bus/minibus were not found to have any association with fatal/serious MVTC in this study. In conclusion, human attitudes contribute more to injury severities while LDV were mostly involved in MVTCs. Hence, this study recommends an increased advocacy campaigns by either Motor Vehicle Accident Fund and National Road Safety Council targeting drivers with a focus on speeding and traveling times.
Motor Vehicle Traffic Crashes, Injury severity, Multinomial logit regression
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