Exploring Road Safety: Exposure Patterns and Crash Risks in Malaysi

ABSTRACT

Background: Traffic mishaps rank fifth among the leading cause of deaths in Malaysia. The nation is strained with more than ten billion ringgit of losses due to traffic mishaps every year. Despite implementation of numerous intervention procedures throughout the years, the number of traffic accidents continues to rise. For instance, the number of traffic accidents in the year 2007 was approximately two times the number of mishaps tape-recorded in 1997.

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to provide an initial understanding of the crash direct exposure relating to the movement level in different states of Malaysia.

It is of interest to check out the relationship of the direct exposure pattern and crash danger before planning reliable countermeasures.

Method: Travelling info based upon odometer reading was acquired through Postcard Survey. 40,000 postcards were sent out arbitrarily to new car owners registered with the Road Transportation Department.

Outcomes: An overall of 6,681 drivers reacted to the survey. From their odometer readings, it was noted that males took a trip 99.

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06 billion km while their female equivalents travelled just 58.69 billion km. The results likewise indicated that male motorists were almost three times more at threat of being associated with road accidents as compared to female motorists.

Significance: The findings are really useful to the pertinent authorities as intervention countermeasures in relation to the different qualities and demographics of the states can be developed. The results likewise act as a recommendation point for state choice makers to change their countermeasures for the improvement of road security.

INTRO

Malaysia shares similar profiles of crash patterns with other developing nations worldwide in the past decade.

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The significant boost of motorised vehicles on the roadways has actually usually resulted in substantial rise in the number of traffic mishaps. The number of traffic accidents in 2007 practically doubled happened in 1997. as compared to the number of traffic mishaps that

Sixty percent of total deaths reported throughout the years included motorcyclists. This high mishap rate has actually resulted in road mishaps being the fifth leading cause of death in Malaysia (Department of Stats, 2008) and caused 9.3 billion ringgit of losses to the country in the year 2003 (ADB-ASEAN, 2003) . In the list of world rankings, Malaysia is ranked 46th of 172 countries with regards to occurrence of deaths in registered vehicles due to road accients (WHO, 2009). Figure 1 shows the rate of occurrence of accidents between 2001 and 2010.

Many road safety studies have led to the convergence that a measure of risk exposure is important for a comprehensive analysis of causal factors (Joly et al., 1993). By definition, “exposure to risk” means the vulnerability of a driver or a system that may lead to an accident (Chapman, 1973).

Factors of exposure can be the mileage driven, the number of trips, the number of registered vehicles, fuel consumption or the number of driver hours. Risk on the other hand, is the ratio of accidents over the exposure parameters.

Exposure analysis has been widely used to explain the variation or to rationalise how a certain group or person may be exposed to a higher risk of accidents than others. One of the the more common parameters is the number of kilometres travelled (KT). People argue that the risk of accidents rises with the amount of travelperformed. Studies by Janke (1991) and Maycock (1997) showed that while distance driven increased linearly with the risk of road accidents, it was not the case for those drivers who clocked lower mileage. Drivers who drove shorter distances but who travelled on busy roads even at lower speeds were exposed to just as many traffic conflicts which could consequently increase their risk of accidents. Chu (2003) in his study concludes that merely comparing the risk of accidents with exposure to driving over long distances can be over or under representing when the differences in travel speed and environmental factors were not taken in consideration. Thus, there are many other influencing factors, but vehicle kilometre travelled (VKT), an indicator relating to the number of vehicles and total distance travelled, is one of the leading factors influencing the road safety performance within Malaysia or neighbouring regions.

The aim of this paper is to provide an initial understanding of the crash exposure pertaining to the mobility level in the various states of Malaysia. It is of interest to explore the relationship of the exposure patterns and crash risks before planning effective countermeasures.

METHODOLOGY

In Malaysia, the number of accidents and deaths in 2007 was extracted from the MIROS Road Accident Analysis and Database System (M-ROADS) which was compiled from the original data kept by the Royal Police of Malaysia (RPM). The data regarding the registered vehicles and motorists in Malaysia were obtained from the Road Transportation Department Malaysia (RTD). The Population information for each state in Malaysia was obtained from the Department of Statistics Malaysia. All the secondary data were then used to estimate the death per 100,000 populations and death per 10,000 vehicles.

Information on travel based on odometer readings was obtained from the Postcard Survey conducted in 2007 and has been reported elsewhere (Nurulhuda, 2010) but briefly described as follows:

The sampling in this study is random sampling, stratified by type of registered vehicle within the states of Malaysia. Forty thousand postcards were sent to new vehicle owners and 6681 respondents completed the questionnaire.

The Postcard Survey had 4 questions: purpose of travel , income, odometer reading and date odometer reading was taken. The personal information of the driver (age, gender, etc.) and vehicle information (type of vehicle, engine size, etc.) was obtain from the JPJ Database. Figure 2 shows a sample of the filled Postcard returned to the researcher. Estimates of Average Annual Kilometers Travelled (AAKT) were classified by state and type of vehicle.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The objective of this paper is to shed some light on road safety performance in the country. The results showed that the absolute number of accidents required exposure data to evaluate the road safety performance. For instance, the fatalities records in Terengganu were 374 deaths but when the population and number of vehicles registered were considered, the risks tended to increase.

The kilometres travelled is the estimate of exposure identified in the study and obtained from odometer survey via postcard method. It should be noted that it was based on representative sample and influenced by certain degree of bias.

The results in this paper are not free from limitation and argument. The data presented in this study can be classified into two categories: primary data and secondary data. The primary data were gathered from the interview survey where the initial targets were motorcyclists and car drivers. The decision to focus on these two groups was due to the fact that they were overrepresented either in the accident data or the vehicle population. However, problems were encountered during the extrapolation of secondary data sourced from RTD and the traffic police database.

The authors acknowledge their shortcomings, while due effort was put into refining the findings. Therefore, the trade-off in the richness of data should be interpreted with care. At this stage, it does not fully depict the picture of exposure and risk patterns of the population in the country. Nevertheless, the authors believed that this paper has introduced the exposure and risk elements in explaining road safety from another perspective.

REFERENCE

  1. [1] Department of Statistics Malaysia, Sebab Kematian Utama Malaysia,Statistik Perangkaan 2008, Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Berhad, 2008.
  2. [2] G. Maycock. Accident liability – the human perspective, Traffic and Transport Psychology. Theory and Application, pp. 65 – 76, Amsterdam: Pergamon, 1997.
  3. [3] Hutchinson, T.P., Wundersitz, L. N., Anderson, R.W.G. and Kloeden, C.N., (2009). Exposure to risk on the roads, Australasian Road Safety Research, Policing and Education Conference, Sydney pp.190-200, November, 2009.
  4. [4] International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD), Road Safety 2010 Annual Report, Paris, 2010.
  5. [5] K.K.C. Mani, M.F.M. Yusuff, R. Umar, The Cost of Road Traffic Accident in Malaysia, ADB-ASEAN Regional Road Safety Program, Accident Costing Report : AC5 , 2003.
  6. [6] M.K. Janke, Accidents, mileage and the exaggeration of risk. Accident Anlaysis and Prevention, Vol. 23, No.2/3, pp. 183 – 188, 1991.
  7. [7] J.Nurulhuda and M.M Jamilah. Development of Exposure Indices for Different Types of Vehicle in Malaysia, MIROS Road Safety Conference 2010, Kuala Lumpur, pp. 108-116, December, 2010
  8. [8] Road Transport Department Malaysia, Report of Registered Vehicles by Type of Vehicle in Malaysia, 2007.
  9. [9] Royal Malaysia Police, Road Accident Statistics Malaysia 2007. Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Berhad, Kuala Lumpur, 2007.
  10. [10] World Health Organization (WHO), Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2009.
  11. [11] X. Chu. The fatality risk of walking in America: A time-based comparative approach, In Walk21 Conference: Health equity and the environment, Portland, 2003.
Updated: Nov 30, 2023
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Exploring Road Safety: Exposure Patterns and Crash Risks in Malaysi. (2016, Mar 31). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/road-accident-anlaysis-essay

Exploring Road Safety: Exposure Patterns and Crash Risks in Malaysi essay
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