Assessment of the Statistical Properties of Road Accident Data

Abstract

The soaring number of vehicles on the road had created a major
social problem through traffic accidents due to the loss of lives and
materials. Road traffic injuries cause considerable economic losses
to individuals, their families, and to nations as a whole. The target of
the study was to conduct a comprehensive statistical analysis of
primary road accident data in order to assess their suitability for use
in road accident prediction models. The study area is Ugbowo-Lagos
Road in Benin City, Edo State Nigeria. A reconnaissance survey was
done first to ascertain the geometric characteristic of the road which
include; the chainage, the vertical and horizontal curve and the super
elevation. Thereafter, primary data which include road accident data
was collected from Federal Road Safety Office in Benin City and
selected statistical techniques, namely; outlier detection, test of
normality and autocorrelation test were conducted to assess the
qualities of the data. With a computed p-value greater than 0.05 for
all the independent variables, the null hypothesis of the Dixon test
was accepted and it was concluded that the accident data obtained
from FRSC is devoid of outliers. In addition, with a centered VIF <
10, it was concluded that there is the absence of multicollinearity
between the dependent and independent variables. In addition, the
calculated Cronbach alpha value of 0.900 as observed in the
reliability test revealed that the data are reliable and the computed
goodness of fit statistics of reliability gave a maximum Guttman
coefficient of 88.10%.