Assessment of the influencing factors and causes of pedestrian crashes at both intersections and along roadway using Regression Analysis: A case of Nekemte Town

Abstract

One of the inputs for the economic development of a country is the expansion of the road network, which is important for the transportation of people and freights from place to place. With this expansion, the occurrences of road traffic accidents in terms of pedestrian crashes are increasing in all parts of the world from time to time and killing the lives of many peoples and damage to properties. This problem is growing at an alarming rate in sub-Saharan African countries like Ethiopia. Therefore, the aim of this study is to Assess the influencing factors and Contributing Causes of pedestrian crashes at both intersections and along roadways using Regression Analysis. The study area was conducted in the East Wollega Zone, Nekemt town of Ethiopia in Oromia National Regional State. the pedestrian crash data recorded between September, (2008) to january,2011 are collected from nekemte traffic police office and used for regression analysis. Besides, a field survey was made to observe the road segments with the high pedestrian volume and pedestrian crash were selected by using a purposive sampling technique. This research study had found out that there was a significant increase in terms of the number of deaths occurring due to pedestrian crashes as a result of the increase in the coverage of road crashes and their consequences. The major causes of pedestrian crashes include Pedestrian and road characteristics, land-use, light and weather conditions, crash location, and speed. The result showed the Road condition, Human factor, shoulder, carriageway, roadways and Volume of traffic have a strong correlation with pedestrian crash occurred while driver skill and age of driver have a low correlation with road traffic accident occurred