Identification and Prioritization of Factors Responsible for Road Traffic Accidents in India

Road Traffic Accident (RTA) is emerging as one of the predominant causes of death across the world. To address the road safety issues, the historical accident database might not be very helpful in developing countries such as India because of the unavailability of most of the data. In this regard, the present study focuses on the identification of the leading causes of RTAs in India, and the areas that need to be focused on priority-basis. Seven factors have been highlighted by the experts working in the field of road safety, as potential causes of the RTAs. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is applied to the data to prioritize the attributes through pair-wise comparison. Results revealed that ‘over speeding’ to be the most important factor; whereas ‘unawareness of road rules’ was observed to be the least prioritized. Necessary countermeasure strategies are discussed at the end, which would help to improve the road safety situation in India.