The Impact of Environmental Risk Factors on Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The environmental factors have a remarkable importance due to their effects on traffic accidents’ severity and their injuries. This study therefore intended to determine the significant environmental factors associated with RTAs in Sri Lanka (2005 - 2019) and the impact of those factors using data obtained from the Department of Police, Sri Lanka. Chi-square statistics and binary logistic regression analysis were applied to derive the required inferences. When the variables were considered separately, all the attributes of environmental characteristics have significant association with the severity of accident. The fitted binary logistic model revealed that rural area, wet road surface, road flooded with water, night with no street lighting, night with improper street lighting, light condition is dusk, or dawn, junction and roundabout have significantly contributed to occurrences of fatal accidents. The odds of happening fatal accidents in wet road surface 1.141 times higher than that it occurs in dry road surface. The odds of happening fatal accidents during night with no street lighting and nigh with improper street lighting are 1.789 times and 1.759 times higher than that it occurs during daylight respectively. The inferences derived from this study would be very useful for policy makers in order to minimize RTAs in Sri Lanka.