Factorial Design and Model for the Effect of National Road Safety Strategy Two (NRSS II).

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges facing the road transportation industry in Ghana is the scale and magnitude of road traffic injuries. This led to the introduction of the second National Road Safety Strategy (NRSS II) for the period 2006-2010, after the implementation of NRSS I for the period 2001-2005, to reduce Road Traffic Accident (RTA) and its fatality rate to the barest minimum. Factorial design was used to investigate the effect of NRSS II in the reduction of RTA, and also find a model for adequate description of the various observations in the data for the number of RTA recorded by Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (M.T.T.U) of the Ghana Police Service. Two-factor factorial design with mixed factors (with region as the random factor and accident nature as the fixed factor) was used for the presentation and analysis of the data of the yearly number of RTA for the period 2006-2009 recorded by the regional branches of M.T.T.U in the Northern and Ashanti regions of Ghana. It was observed from our analysis that the campaign on the NRSS II helped in the reduction of the seriousness of RTA. A mixed-effect model was determined and it was found to be adequate with variability of 92.91% of the number of RTA explained by region, accident nature and the region-accident nature interaction at significant level of .05. Our research shows that socio-economic factors of a region have a great impact on the severity and frequency of RTA.