Abstract:

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors affecting road traffic death or injury cases between the years 2005 and 2014 in Turkey. Methods: This study reviewed 1,201,203 eligible case reports, out of 1,656,403 road traffic death or injury cases, from the records of the Turkish National Police, between the years of 2005 and 2014. The independent variables were; the location and time of the accidents; the type and model of the vehicles and the socio-demographic characteristics of the drivers. The dependent variable was the presence of a fatality in the accident. A logistic regression model was built to investigate the risk factors affecting the number of death cases for each year. Negative Binomial and Poisson regression models were used to investigate the risk factors affecting the death cases and injury cases, respectively. Results: The percentage of cases which involved deaths was 1.9%. Being a male increased the risk of road traffic deaths. Data also showed that the number of deaths increased in accidents where the drivers had lower educational levels, where larger vehicles were involved (e.g. busses), and where accidents took place outside residential areas. Conclusion: Informing the drivers and implementing the traffic laws effectively will contribute to decreasing the numbers of road traffic deaths in the near future.

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