scholarly journals Road Traffic Fatalities in Malawi: The Role of Pedestrian Behaviour Factors

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 48-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gibson Ngwira ◽  
Benjamin Bolaane ◽  
Bhagabat Parida

Pedestrian behaviour is one of the major contributors to road fatalities. The negative binomial regression model was found to better agree with road fatality data, and this study used this model to assess the influence of pedestrian behaviour factors on road fatalities in Malawi. The data used in this analysis were crash reports of pedestrian behaviour factors and observed fatalities for the period 2000–2015 obtained from the national database, except for the 2013 data, which were disregarded because they appeared to be incomplete. Whereas pedestrian behaviour factors of walking on roads, crossing outside pedestrian crossings, and other negligent and careless behaviours were found to be positively correlated with road deaths, indicating that road-related fatalities increased with increasing input data, factors of being under the influence of alcohol and crossing at pedestrian crossings demonstrated negligible influence. The study also found that there was a 1% increase in the number of crash deaths for every additional fatal crash involving pedestrians walking on roads. Moreover, an additional 0.5% increase in the number of fatalities was recorded for every fatal crash involving a pedestrian behaviour factor of crossing outside the pedestrian crossing or other negligent behaviour. An increase of 0.3% in the number of the fatalities was seen for every extra fatal crash caused by crossing carelessly or factors other than pedestrian behaviour. Despite coefficient values being small in all variables, which is a major limitation of this study, enforcement can prioritise those variables that increase road-related fatalities or even couple them with other risk factors such as speed.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yesuf Abdela Mustefa ◽  
Addis Belayhun

Abstract Background: Road traffic accident is a major public health as well as economic challenge that rated the eighth leading cause of death. The severity became higher in developing countries. Ethiopian is among the most confronted countries in the world. We utilized the Ethiopian Toll Roads Enterprise data to provide insights and model significant determinants of accidents involving injuries and fatalities. Besides utilizing recent dataset, we applied the most appropriate but forwent statistical model. Moreover, we examined the significance of the effects of drivers’ age and gender that have not been the cases in the literatures.Methods: We made descriptive insights available on the basis of graphs from integrated traffic accident and flow datasets. We tested for the presence of over-dispersion in a total of 1824 observations of accident data recorded from September, 2014 to December, 2019 for inferential analysis. Finally, we modeled the effects of significant variables on the number of injuries using the negative binomial regression model. Results: we found that the number of injuries in accidents were significantly determined by type of vehicles, ownership status of vehicles, accident time weather condition, driver-vehicle relationship, drivers’ level of education, and drivers’ age.Conclusions: Heavy trucks were more likely to cause more number of injuries than medium or small vehicles. Hot and windy weather conditions were associated with higher probability of the number of injuries. The likelihood of the number of injuries were lower when drivers are owner of the vehicle; drivers level of education is above secondary school; and the age of the driver is between 18 and 23 years old. Moreover, due concern needs to be given for traffic road rules.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yesuf Abdela Mustefa ◽  
Addis Belayhun

Abstract Background: Road traffic accident is a major public health as well as economic challenge that rated the eighth leading cause of death. The severity became higher in developing countries. Ethiopian is among the most confronted countries in the world. We utilized the Ethiopian Toll Roads Enterprise data to provide insights and model significant determinants of accidents involving injuries and fatalities. Besides utilizing recent dataset, we applied the most appropriate but forwent statistical model. Moreover, we examined the significance of the effects of drivers’ age and gender that have not been the cases in the literatures.Methods: We made descriptive insights available on the basis of graphs from integrated traffic accident and flow datasets. We tested for the presence of over-dispersion in a total of 1824 observations of accident data recorded from September, 2014 to December, 2019 for inferential analysis. Finally, we modeled the effects of significant variables on the number of injuries using the negative binomial regression model. Results: we found that the number of injuries in accidents were significantly determined by type of vehicles, ownership status of vehicles, accident time weather condition, driver-vehicle relationship, drivers’ level of education, and drivers’ age.Conclusions: Heavy trucks were more likely to cause more number of injuries than medium or small vehicles. Hot and windy weather conditions were associated with higher probability of the number of injuries. The likelihood of the number of injuries were lower when drivers are owner of the vehicle; drivers level of education is above secondary school; and the age of the driver is between 18 and 23 years old. Moreover, due concern needs to be given for traffic road rules.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hai-Yang Zhang ◽  
An-Ran Zhang ◽  
Qing-Bin Lu ◽  
Xiao-Ai Zhang ◽  
Zhi-Jie Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background COVID-19 has impacted populations around the world, with the fatality rate varying dramatically across countries. Selenium, as one of the important micronutrients implicated in viral infections, was suggested to play roles. Methods An ecological study was performed to assess the association between the COVID-19 related fatality and the selenium content both from crops and topsoil, in China. Results Totally, 14,045 COVID-19 cases were reported from 147 cities during 8 December 2019–13 December 2020 were included. Based on selenium content in crops, the case fatality rates (CFRs) gradually increased from 1.17% in non-selenium-deficient areas, to 1.28% in moderate-selenium-deficient areas, and further to 3.16% in severe-selenium-deficient areas (P = 0.002). Based on selenium content in topsoil, the CFRs gradually increased from 0.76% in non-selenium-deficient areas, to 1.70% in moderate-selenium-deficient areas, and further to 1.85% in severe-selenium-deficient areas (P < 0.001). The zero-inflated negative binomial regression model showed a significantly higher fatality risk in cities with severe-selenium-deficient selenium content in crops than non-selenium-deficient cities, with incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 3.88 (95% CIs: 1.21–12.52), which was further confirmed by regression fitting the association between CFR of COVID-19 and selenium content in topsoil, with the IRR of 2.38 (95% CIs: 1.14–4.98) for moderate-selenium-deficient cities and 3.06 (1.49–6.27) for severe-selenium-deficient cities. Conclusions Regional selenium deficiency might be related to an increased CFR of COVID-19. Future studies are needed to explore the associations between selenium status and disease outcome at individual-level.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Nabil Shaaban ◽  
Bárbara Peleteiro ◽  
Maria Rosario O. Martins

Abstract Background This study offers a comprehensive approach to precisely analyze the complexly distributed length of stay among HIV admissions in Portugal. Objective To provide an illustration of statistical techniques for analysing count data using longitudinal predictors of length of stay among HIV hospitalizations in Portugal. Method Registered discharges in the Portuguese National Health Service (NHS) facilities Between January 2009 and December 2017, a total of 26,505 classified under Major Diagnostic Category (MDC) created for patients with HIV infection, with HIV/AIDS as a main or secondary cause of admission, were used to predict length of stay among HIV hospitalizations in Portugal. Several strategies were applied to select the best count fit model that includes the Poisson regression model, zero-inflated Poisson, the negative binomial regression model, and zero-inflated negative binomial regression model. A random hospital effects term has been incorporated into the negative binomial model to examine the dependence between observations within the same hospital. A multivariable analysis has been performed to assess the effect of covariates on length of stay. Results The median length of stay in our study was 11 days (interquartile range: 6–22). Statistical comparisons among the count models revealed that the random-effects negative binomial models provided the best fit with observed data. Admissions among males or admissions associated with TB infection, pneumocystis, cytomegalovirus, candidiasis, toxoplasmosis, or mycobacterium disease exhibit a highly significant increase in length of stay. Perfect trends were observed in which a higher number of diagnoses or procedures lead to significantly higher length of stay. The random-effects term included in our model and refers to unexplained factors specific to each hospital revealed obvious differences in quality among the hospitals included in our study. Conclusions This study provides a comprehensive approach to address unique problems associated with the prediction of length of stay among HIV patients in Portugal.


Author(s):  
Hitesh Chawla ◽  
Megat-Usamah Megat-Johari ◽  
Peter T. Savolainen ◽  
Christopher M. Day

The objectives of this study were to assess the in-service safety performance of roadside culverts and evaluate the potential impacts of installing various safety treatments to mitigate the severity of culvert-involved crashes. Such crashes were identified using standard fields on police crash report forms, as well as through a review of pertinent keywords from the narrative section of these forms. These crashes were then linked to the nearest cross-drainage culvert, which was associated with the nearest road segment. A negative binomial regression model was then estimated to discern how the risk of culvert-involved crashes varied as a function of annual average daily traffic, speed limit, number of travel lanes, and culvert size and offset. The second stage of the analysis involved the use of the Roadside Safety Analysis Program to estimate the expected crash costs associated with various design contexts. A series of scenarios were evaluated, culminating in guidance as to the most cost-effective treatments for different combinations of roadway geometric and traffic characteristics. The results of this study provide an empirical model that can be used to predict the risk of culvert-involved crashes under various scenarios. The findings also suggest that the installation of safety grates on culvert openings provides a promising alternative for most of the cases where the culvert is located within the clear zone. In general, a guardrail is recommended when adverse conditions are present or when other treatments are not feasible at a specific location.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0254479
Author(s):  
Ta-Chien Chan ◽  
Jia-Hong Tang ◽  
Cheng-Yu Hsieh ◽  
Kevin J. Chen ◽  
Tsan-Hua Yu ◽  
...  

Background Sentinel physician surveillance in communities has played an important role in detecting early signs of epidemics. The traditional approach is to let the primary care physician voluntarily and actively report diseases to the health department on a weekly basis. However, this is labor-intensive work, and the spatio-temporal resolution of the surveillance data is not precise at all. In this study, we built up a clinic-based enhanced sentinel surveillance system named “Sentinel plus” which was designed for sentinel clinics and community hospitals to monitor 23 kinds of syndromic groups in Taipei City, Taiwan. The definitions of those syndromic groups were based on ICD-10 diagnoses from physicians. Methods Daily ICD-10 counts of two syndromic groups including ILI and EV-like syndromes in Taipei City were extracted from Sentinel plus. A negative binomial regression model was used to couple with lag structure functions to examine the short-term association between ICD counts and meteorological variables. After fitting the negative binomial regression model, residuals were further rescaled to Pearson residuals. We then monitored these daily standardized Pearson residuals for any aberrations from July 2018 to October 2019. Results The results showed that daily average temperature was significantly negatively associated with numbers of ILI syndromes. The ozone and PM2.5 concentrations were significantly positively associated with ILI syndromes. In addition, daily minimum temperature, and the ozone and PM2.5 concentrations were significantly negatively associated with the EV-like syndromes. The aberrational signals detected from clinics for ILI and EV-like syndromes were earlier than the epidemic period based on outpatient surveillance defined by the Taiwan CDC. Conclusions This system not only provides warning signals to the local health department for managing the risks but also reminds medical practitioners to be vigilant toward susceptible patients. The near real-time surveillance can help decision makers evaluate their policy on a timely basis.


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