College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia
Abstract
This study analyses the magnitude of traffic accidents in the Kingdom of SaudiArabia (KS A) over the last fifteen years. The Kingdom has experienced a rapideconomic growth resulting in a large increase in auto ownership and a rapidlyexpanding improved road network. As a result, traffic accidents have become aserious problem facing the country. During the period from 1971 to 1994, thenumbers of traffic accidents, injuries , and fatalities have increased by 30 times, 6times, and 7 times, respectively. A comparative analysis of the traffic accidentexperience versus other developing countries is carried out. The relativesituation of traffic safety impacts is compared with developing countriesexperiencing rapid economic expansion. This study showed that both fatality rateand accident severity have increased. The need for improvement is urgentlydemonstrated by the magnitude.
1 Introduction
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KS A) has experienced a rapid economicgrowth since the oil boom in 1973 resulting in an enormous increase in themotorization rate (vehicle per 1000 population) associated with a rapidlyexpanding road network construction. The number of registered vehicles hasincreased from 144,768 in 1970 to 5,861,614 in 1994, a forty-fold increase in 24years/ This growth in motorization has been accompanied with a dramaticincrease in the size of the road network in the country. The length of pavedroads has increased from 8500 km in 1970 to 43,003 km in 1992, a nearly five-fold increase in 22 years/ As a result of this enormous growth in motorizationand the road-network size, traffic accidents have become a serious problemfacing this developing country. The number of drivers has also proportionallyincreased as large.
During the period from 1971 to 1994, the numbers of traffic accidents,injuries, and fatalities have increased by 30 times, 6 times, and 7 times,respectively (see Table 1 and Fig.l). Fig. 2 depicts that during the period 1971-1994 while fatality rates (per person) increased by 157%, the fatality rates (pervehicle) decreased by 82%. This figure also shows that there were tendencies forfatality and injury rates per vehicle to decrease and to increase per person overtime. Such trends agree with what Smeed^ found. Bener and Jadaan* foundthat road traffic fatalities is at the top of the list of major causes of death in thiscountry. Statistics from the USA National Safety Council* ranked road trafficfatalities as the third most common cause of death in all age group.
Table 1. Population, registered vehicles, and traffic accident statistics (1971-1994).
Fig. 1 . Trends in registered vehicles, accidents, injuries, and fatalities.
Year
Fig. 2. Trends in accident rates per vehicle and per person in KSA (1971-1994)
The size of the problem can be shown by comparing accident severityand cost in KSA with those of the USA, as presented in Table 2. The tablereveals that the percentage of injury accidents in KSA is almost double that inthe USA. The percentage of fatal accidents in KSA is 2.6% and thecorresponding percentage for the USA is 0.313. This is more than eight times.
The cost of a traffic accident in KSA is 1.7 times greater than that in the USA.These percentages and numbers show that the loss of life and the accompaniedeconomic loss to the country are large when compared with the USA. Statisticshave also shown that more than about eighty percent of all reported accidentsoccurred in KSA during the last five years (1990-1994) were attributed to thedriver/ Therefore, it is of primary importance to study driver-related factors(human factors) that may contribute to the traffic accident problem.
Table 2. Severity and cost of accidents for KSA and USA.
Item
Severity of accidentPDOInjuryFatal
Total accidentsTotal cost (billion)Cost per accident
KSA (1993)
82.1%15.3%2.6%85,277$4.96$58,163
US A (1992)
91.6%8.0%0.313%11,900,000$407.5$34,202
Sources: [1,6,24].
The objective of this study is twofold: 1) to discuss the magnitude oftraffic accidents in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over the last fifteen years andto compare the situation of traffic safety with that of other countries and 2) toanalyze road accidents with more emphasis on human factors issues and causalevents. The first objective will be achieved by examining changes in accidentrates over the past two decades and comparing these rates with those in somedeveloping countries (e.g., Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Mexico)—The definitionof developed and developing contries is not given herein. World Bank relatesthis definition to gross national product (GNP) per capita^-and developedcountries (e.g., USA, UK, Sweden, Germany, and Canada) by using Smeed'sformula. The second objective will be attained by analyzing data obtained frompolice records using statistical techniques such as odds ratio and proportioncomparisons.
2 Data sources and limitations
In order to quantify the magnitude of the traffic-accident problem,accident data should be available and reliable. In many countries, especially inthe developed world, data may come from different sources, including police,insurance, and hospital records. The situation, however, is different indeveloping countries, where the only sort of data is the police. ' ' In thesecountries, the police accident data are not collected with a view to providingresearch information but for the purposes of enforcement, safety and litigation. *'*
Therefore, such data do not often have detailed information to carry out in-depthanalysis and research.
Similar to other developing countries, the main source of road accidentdata in KSA is the police. The Publication of Road Accident Statistics, a yearlypublication by the General Directorate of Traffic, Ministry of Interior/ containsall reported accidents with information related to the driver (e.g., age, education,and marital status) and the accident (type, cause, time, and severity). Such datareveal three main problems with police records:™>™>™ (1) Until 1991, accidentdata were restricted to the fatal and injury accidents (i.e., no consideration forincluding property-damage-only (PDO) accidents), (2) Deficiency in the typicalreporting system exists due to incomplete, unclear, and/or incorrect data, and (3)The filing and report system is primitive (i.e., reports are filled manually and nocomputerization is made to maintain data).
Also, the reliability of police reports is questionable related to causalevents because policemen are not trained as engineers and look for prosecutiondata rather than engineering problems. "*" Thus, researchers face difficulties incollecting accident data due to manual searching in the files and the otherunderlying problems just mentioned. In this study, a great effort was made toobtain data from police records and to extract other nations' data fromliterature.
3 Accident rates compared
Three known measures can be used for accident comparisons whenrelated to motorization rate (vehicles per 1000 persons (V/P)): 1) fatalities per10,000 persons (F/P), 2) fatalities per 1000 vehicles (F/V), and 3) fatalities per100 million vehicle kilometers (F/VK). The last one (F/VK) is the best measurefor making reliable comparisons among nations since it takes into considerationthe total amount of travel. However, this measure is not available for KSA.Therefore, the other two measures (F/P and F/V) are used herein for comparisonpurposes.
Fig. 3 (based on very recent data)*' shows that road accident fatalityrates (i.e., deaths per 10,000 vehicles) are high in developing countries, veryoften more than 5 times greater than for those countries of Western Europe andNorth America (Jacobs and Sayer^ reported 20 times based on 1970s data).Among 40 nations, KSA ranks the 25th as depicted in Fig. 3. About 8 personsper 10,000 vehicles are killed in traffic accidents in KSA. Taking into accountmotorization level, the interpretation of this rate is different as discussed below.
Fig.3. Death rates for various developing and developed countries.
- a —
The work of Smeed^ on data from developed countries have shown thatthere were tendencies for fatality rates per vehicle to decrease and per person toincrease over time. Fig. 2 suggests that the same findings of Smeed apply toKSA as well. It is obvious from the figure that when accidents, injuries, andfatalities are related to population, the rate increases with time. However, whenthese items are related to registered vehicles, the rate decreases. Smeedrepresented the trend for fatality rate per vehicle in the following form:
(1)
FIt follows from the above formula that —, the death rate per registered vehicle,
Vy
decreases as —, the proportion of vehicles in population (motorization),
increases. Smeed applied this formula on data from 20 developed countries andfound that the death rate is varying approximately inversely as the two-thirdspower of the proportion of vehicles to the population. In other words, he foundthat a and (3 are 0.0003 and 2/3, respectively.
Applying Smeed's formula on data from 35 developing countries, Jacobsand Cutting^ found that a and J3 are 0.00039 and 0.64, respectively. In additionthey repeated the earlier work of Smeed on data from developed countries andfound that a and f! are 0.00021 and 0.72, respectively, indicating that thefatality rates based on registered vehicles in these countries have decreasedbetween 1938 and 1980.
In this study, Smeed' formula was used on KSA data for the periodfrom 1971 to 1994 (Table 1). A regression technique is employed to estimate aand /?. The linear transformation of eqn (1) was first obtained by taking itslogarithm:
F frV^log y = log a -J (2)
and hence
F Vlogy = log a-/? log- (3)
The linear transformation was then regressed to give the following model:
log— = -8.10-0.795 log— ( =92%) (4)
By taking the antilog of the above model, the values of a and J3 for the case ofKSA were found to be 0.0003 and 0.795, respectively. Thus, the modifiedSmeed's formula for the KSA data becomes:
- = 0.0003- (5)
The fitted values obtained from this model along with actual fatality ratesare plotted against motorization level in Fig. 4. The model shows reasonable fit.When plotted over time (1971-1994), actual and modeled data show adownward trend indicating that an overall improvement in safety levels havebeen achieved over these years (Fig. 5). Yet, it is obvious from this figure thatthe last five years (1990-1994) have depicted a slow raising trend in fatality ratesimplying that safety levels show no improvement lately. This increasing trendwas also detected using time series modeling in earlier studies conducted by theauthor."-"
Fig.4. Actual and fitted values for relationship between death rate andmotorization.
Fig. 5 . Actual and fitted values for death rates over years.
When actual rates are plotted with fitted curves of developing anddeveloped countries found by Jacobs and Cutting,^ the level of traffic safety interms of death per vehicle achieved shows a significant improvement with theincrease of motorization as shown in Fig. 6. For example, at the level ofmotorization level of 300 and above, the majority of points are below the
developing country curve and become closer with the developed countriescurve.
150 20OVXPxlOOO
Fig.6. Smeed's fitted curves for KSA, developing and developed countries.
Fig. 7 illustrates fatality rates related to motorization levels for fourteencountries. The figure shows both fitted curves for developed and developingcountries obtained by Jacobs and Cutting.^ It can be concluded from this figurethat KSA lies almost under the fitted line for developing countries. This impliesthat in relative to its motorization level, KSA has a low fatality rate compared tothose of other developing countries. On the other hand, KSA lies relatively farabove the fitted curve of developed countries suggesting that its fatality rate isstill high compared to those of developed countries. It is also apparent from thisfigure that KSA is relatively in a reasonable position among other countries. Forexample, KSA has a higher motorization level than some other countries (e.g.,Egypt, South Korea, Jordan, Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela), while its fatalityrate is yet much lower.
Fig.7. KSA and other countries with the fitted curves for developing anddeveloped.
4 Accident severity using odds ratio
A commonly used technique in the analysis of categorical data is theexamination of odds ratios (co). Refer to Table 3. Within row 1, the odds that theresponse is in column 1 instead of column 2 is defined to be D^ =^11/^21-
Within row 2, the corresponding odds equals fij - n^ I n^. The odds ratio is
simply the ratio of these two odds:^
" " (6)21 ",2 21
Table 3 . A typical 2x2 table for categorical data.
Rows 12
Totals
Columns1 2
"ll «U"21 "uHI Hj
Totals
4"2n
The odds ratio (non negative number) is also termed the cross-product ratio andthe approximate relative risk.
Taking the year of 1971 as a reference, the odds ratios of fatalitiesamong accident victims (injuries + fatalities) with 95% confidence intervals
(c!)e***)™ were computed for the years from 1972 to 1994 as presented in
Table 4 and plotted in Fig. 8. That is, the measure of odds ratio is used in thisstudy as a severity index to asses the levels of accident severity over time.
Table 4. Estimated odds ratio (severity index) and 95% confidence limits.
For illustration, Table 5 gives the frequencies of fatalities and injuries for 1994and 1971 in KSA. The odds ratio computed from this table using eqn (6) is 1.02(co = 1.02).This is an estimate of the population odds ratio but it is not that farfrom 1. It means that the odds of a victim being killed in a traffic accident thatoccurred in 1991 equals to the odds of a victim being killed in a traffic accidentoccurred in 1971.
Table 5 . 2x2 for accident victims in 1971 and 1994.
Thus, the levels of accident severity in 1971 and 1994 are almost even.This suggests that no improvement in this dimension seems to have taken placebetween these two points of time. Yet, it should be perceived from Fig. 8 that,overall, since 1985 the levels of severity have shown some sign of improvementcompared to the period between 1975 and 1985. The maximum severity wasobserved in 1977 where the odds ratio equals to 1.51 indicating that the odds ofa victim being killed in a traffic accident occurred in 1977 was 1.5 (one and ahalf) times as large as the odds of a victim being killed in a traffic accidentoccurred in 1971. The severity over the past five years has displayed a generalincrease.
Fig.8. Accident severity represented by odds ratio.
5 Factors contributing to accidents
Traffic accidents can be attributed to human, vehicular, andenvironmental factors. When considered alone, human factors have been foundto contribute to 57 percent of the accidents in the developed countries. Togetherwith vehicular and environmental factors, human factors account for about 92percent of the accidents.^ The following sections discuss road, vehicular andhuman factors.
5.1 Road factors
Despite more than two decades of modern road building in KSA,knowledge of the safety consequences of highway design decisions is limited.The Ministry of Communications is responsible for road design and construction
in the country. This agency relies on design standard implemented in developedcountries. Engineering data for investigating relationships between safety andhighway design features are not available due to the problems with the currentaccident reporting system mentioned earlier.
5.2 Vehicular factors
According to police data* about 5% (compared to 1.6% in USA/ofroad accidents in KSA were attributed to vehicular factors. In many developedcountries 2 to 20 percent of accidents have been related to such factors. KSAhas started a periodic Motor Vehicle Inspection Program (MVIP) in 1986. Allvehicles must be inspected on an annual basis. The program gives more attentionto the vehicle tires, lights, steering and braking system. Recently, inspectionstations of MVIP cover 90% of the country^. Ergurn" found that the averagecondition of vehicles in KSA is worse than that of vehicles in some USA states(Missouri, California, and Pennsylvania). Furthermore, he observed that therewas a strong relationship between driver characteristics (e.g., income andeducation) and vehicle condition. Unfortunately, no in-depth studies have beenconducted on the role of various vehicle defects in accident causation in KSA.However, it appears from statistics that involvement of such factors is very small(about 5%) compared with that of human errors.
5.3 Human factors
As mentioned earlier, about eighty percent of accidents reported in KSAduring 1994 were attributed to drivers and driver error. Lee^ evaluated humanfactors on traffic accidents in Riyadh (The capital of KSA) and reported veryclose percentage (84%). Hence, studying human factors such as age, nationality,and education is of interest. Several variables related to the driver are analyzedbelow.
5.3.1 AgeAmong other age groups, drivers of 30-40 year old are more involved in
road accidents, as illustrated in Fig.9.a. It should be stated that drivers less than40 year old (an important slice of society needed badly in this developingcountry) represent about 68% of all drivers involved in accidents. More than onethird of those drivers stayed in hospitals for treatments.^ This indicates howmuch accidents are a high economic and social cost to a country.
Teenage drivers are involved in 2.05% of all accidents occurred in USAduring 1993.* The corresponding percentage for KSA is about 7%, i.e. threetimes greater.
5.3.2 NationalityNon-Saudis account for about 38% of the country population,^ yet they
are involved in 44 percent of accidents. In other words, Saudis and non-Saudis
are almost equally involved in road accidents (Fig.9.b). This may be attributed tothe presence of expatriates from all over the world. The drivers of thispopulation come from different cultures with different habits and attitudes. Thus,the wide differences in their backgrounds and driving behavior may createtraffic-safety-related problems. This raises the difficulty of trying to address thetraffic safety problem. There may need to be provided a unique educational andtraining program developed in cooperation with the diplomatic sector for eachnationality.
5.3.3 Marital StatusAccording to police data, married drivers have found to be involved in
more accidents than single ones, as shown in Fig. 9.c . Yet, the percentage of thetwo groups are very close. It should be stated that based on Islamic rules womenare not allowed to drive in KS A. Therefore, female drivers are not involved inthis analysis.
5.3.4 EducationData from police records indicate that 20% of drivers involved in road
accidents in KSA over the period 1990-1994 had never attended school andwere illiterate (Fi.g.9.d). This group in the population of drivers needs a specialconsideration from traffic safety planners during public awareness campaigns.The interesting observation is that the percentage of illiterate drivers has reducedfrom 31% in the period 1980-1984 to 20% in the period 1990-1994, a 11%decrease. It should be mentioned that no data is available to lead us to know theproportion of illiterate drivers in the whole population of drivers in order toconduct more reliable comparison between the two groups of drivers in terms ofeducation.
5.3.5 Driver's LicenseFig. 11 depicts the percentages of drivers without a driver's license
involved in accidents in the country over the fifteen year period (1980-1994).During that period the percent reached its peak (69.5%) in 1983 and decreaseddrastically to 11 percent in 1990. Although the percentage of drivers committedthis violation has achieved a remarkable reduction between the two five-yearperiods as given in Table 6 (from 34% to 14%, statistically significant at 0.05level), this percentage increased steadily in the past five years (i.e., from 11% in1990 to 19% in 1994 (Fig.9.e)). This may raise questions about law enforcementmeasures for unlicensed drivers.
Fig. 11. Percentages of unlicensed drivers involved in road accidents (1990-1994).
Table 6. Proportions of three violations committed during the two periods.
Violation
Speed*Run-red-light**Unlicensed.*
"i157,680157,680191,152
1980-1984*
99,67917,97465,239
A0.630.110.34
/353353545
\,918,918,533
1990-1;
14854,73,
994':,219578551
P*0.420.150.14
* Reject HQ at 0.05 level.
** Accept H at 0.05 level.
6 Accident characteristics
In this section, typical characteristics of road accidents are analyzed.These characteristics include accident time, location, type, and cause. Throughthe analysis the percentages of some characteristics are compared with those inthe USA.
6.1 Time of occurrence
Government statistics* indicate that 63% of traffic accidents occur duringday time (Fi.g.lO.a). This is a large percentage when compared to that of US A
(48%). Moreover, fatality rates are higher in daytime in KSA. Yet, fatality crashrates during nighttime are much higher in USA than daytime rates.* In fact theyare almost five times higher. The reason could be the smaller percentage of nighttravel in KSA due to the lack of night entertainment places, low level ofindustrialization (work time is between 8 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.), and social habitsrelated to traditions. Further, alcohol consumption, which is considered a majorcausal effect of accidents in other countries, is forbidden in KSA. In terms ofdays, Fig. 10.b gives the distribution of accident percentages by day of the week.It can be observed that the accident occurrence is almost uniformly distributedover days. In other words, the likelihood of accident occurrence in any day ofthe week is roughly even.
6.2 Location of occurrence
Fig. 10. c show that the majority of traffic accidents (80%) occur insidethe cities. This may reflect the huge amount of travel (vehicle kilometers) drivenwithin urban areas. Although it is expected that the severity of rural accidents(death per accident) is higher than that of urban accidents, this can not beconfirmed for KSA due to the lack of detailed data. A study conducted by theauthor** showed that 53% of urban accidents that occurred in Riyadh wereintersection related and more than half of these accidents were right-anglecollisions due to running the red light.
6.3 Types of accidents
The official statistics in KSA classify accident types into two categories:1) collisions (i.e., with other motor vehicle(s), pedestrians, fixed objects, andanimal), and 2) noncollision (i.e., roll-over and off-road). Table 7 gives thepercentages for classifications under the two categories for KSA and USA. Bothcountries have almost a uniform distribution for accident types except forcollision with pedestrians (KSA is about six times greater) and collision withanimal (USA is about four times greater). The percentages of accidents by typeis given in Fig. 10.d.
6.4 Causes of accidents
The distribution of accidents by cause is shown in Fig. 10.e. Among othercauses, violating speed limit ranks first followed by running the red light. Nearly60% of accidents were attributed to speeding in excess of the posted speed limitand failure to obey the traffic signal indication. About forty-two percent ofaccidents were attributed to speeding.
When compared with USA data, KSA has 3.4 times more accidents dueto speed as presented in Table 7. One fourth of accidents were due to traffic rule
violations (e.g., improper turning, overtaking, and stopping). From Table 7, itcan be concluded that the percentages of improper-overtaking and disregarded-signal accidents in KSA are about eight times and four times higher respectivelythan in the USA.
Table 7. A comparison for illustration between KSA and USA
Item
Type of accidentCollision with-Other motor vehiclesPedestrianFixed objectAnimal
Noncollision
Cause of accidentSpeedDisregarded signalImproper turnImproper overtaking
K
739.7.0.7.
41157.10
SA*
.7%5%1%9%5%
.9%
.4%3%.7%
USA**
73.1%1.6%14.7%3.7%5.6%
12.2%15%4.5%1.3%
* Source: [1].** Source: [6].
As discussed above, speeding and running the red light are thepredominant violations among the other violations committed by drivers in KSA.Thus, more analysis regarding these two violations are presented below. Thequestion of interest is: have these violations decreased over the last fifteenyears? To answer this question the proportions of each violation for two five-year periods (i.e., 1980-1984 and 1990-1994) were statistically compared. Table6 presents the total number of violations (A?), frequency (x) and proportion(p) related to corresponding violation during each of the two periods. The
hypothesis test performed, using the z-test for comparing two proportions, hasthe following form:
Pi ' versus
where p. is the proportion of corresponding variable (violation) during the ith
The hypothesis tests conclude the following:• A significant reduction (at a 0.05 level) in speeding violation was observedbetween the two periods. That is, a sound improvement in lowering thefrequency of this dangerous violation has been achieved (Reject the nullhypothesis).
• No significant difference was found between the proportions of running thered light violation indicating that drivers still disregard the red indication(Accept the null hypothesis).
7 Usage of seat belts
As discussed above, the severity index has increased recently as shownfrom the odds ratio. One effective way to reduce severity during the occurrenceof a road accident is by using seat belts. Less than 2% of the drivers involved inaccidents in KSA were belted^ compared to 62% and 90% in USA andCanada, respectively. Past studies have shown that safety belts reduce thechance of death or serious injury in a crash by almost half. Other studiesindicated that in front crashes drivers reported to be using their belts enjoyed anextra margin of protection with air bags.** Driver deaths in frontal crashes were20 percent lower among belted drivers of passenger cars equipped with air bagsthan among belted drivers in cars without air bags. That is, air bags are moreeffective with the use of safety belts. Despite these facts, KSA has no safety beltuse laws. Further, no public awareness campaign has been conducted to educatedrivers for the importance of wearing seat belts. This lack of seat belt usageneeds to be further addressed.
8 Discussion
This study has shown that despite the enormous increase in the numberof registered vehicles in KSA, fatality rates (per registered vehicle) appear tohave declined. Using statistical odds ratio, accident severity has declined overthe past 25 years. Despite the overall decreasing trend in both fatality rates andseverity, data have shown that this developing country has experienced aworsening situation in safety levels since 1990. That is, the fatality rate hasincreased from 5.5 in 1990 to 7 in 1994. Similarly, the severity index representedby the odds ratio has become 1.02 in 1994 compared with 0.92 in 1990.
Efforts were made in this study to compare the situation of traffic safetyin KSA with that of other nations using Smeed's formula. The comparisonrevealed that KSA stands at a middle position. In spite of its relatively highmotorization level, this country has a lower fatality rate than some othercountries.
The study has also disclosed that drivers are responsible for nearly eightypercent of accidents. About 68% of drivers involved in road accidents during thelast five years belonged to the below 40 years age group. The proportion ofteenage drivers were found to be three times that of USA. Approximately one-
fifth of drivers involved in accidents were unlicensed. With respect to accidentcauses, nearly 60% of accidents were attributed to speeding in excess of theposted speed limit and failure to obey traffic signal indication.
9 Recommendations
Based on the previous discussions and findings, recommendations of thisstudy are outlined as follows:
• In-depth research should be started soon to investigate the current increasingtrend in both fatality rates and accident severity.
• The capabilities of the accident reporting system is a problem in KS A. Nodetailed information is available in order to carry out deep research. Forexample, relationship between accident occurrences and road/vehicle factorsis obstructed by data limitations. The manual filling system for accidentreports creates difficulties in collecting data for analysis purposes. The datacollection system should improved and computerization is urgently needed.
• There should be a special consideration to the problem of illegal driving(driving without a driver's license). Restrictions for unlicensed drivers shouldbe strictly enforced to keep them off the road.
• Two driver-related-causes of accidents were found to be predominant,namely, exceeding speed limit and the failure to stop at the red light. Strictlaw enforcement along with educational campaigns must be seriouslyconsidered to try to bring the numbers of both violations down. Othercountermeasures need to be also considered.
• The use of safety belts is relatively very low. Using safety belts should bemade compulsory. Together with publicity and public information,enforcement should be effective in this matter.
• There should be a permanent road safety committee to supervise theimplementation of any safety programs and to evaluate safety measures andstrategies implemented in the future. The committee should also beresponsible for directing research activities according to the problem needsand making recommendations for improving the accident reporting systemand traffic safety programs.
• To gain some insight into the size and nature of the road accident problem,KSA can approach the problem more effectively by establishing a researchinstitute (long-run strategy) where in-depth studies on human, vehicular andenvironmental factors contributing to road accidents can be conducted. This
environmental factors contributing to road accidents can be conducted. Thiswould be a centralized institute to bring together the various interestedparties in a common focus point.
• There is a continuing need for ongoing study and research to identifyimportant patterns and changes in traffic accident trends and recent problems.An annual comparative analysis of accident types may be able to moreeffectively identify traffic safety concerns that need to be addressed on a shortterm basis.
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