understanding the Characteristics of Urban Road Crashes in Lagos Metropolis: Implications for Risk Reduction Strategies

Abstract

This study interrogates ten years of road traffic crash statistics in Lagos state, with the goal of understanding the characteristics of the phenomena over time, the study examined the patterns of crash occurrence and casualty, time and days of the crash, and number of vehicles involved. Secondary data for the period 2013 to 2022 were obtained from FRSC, cleaned and processed. Using descriptive statistical methods with the aid of Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, pivot table, chart, frequency table, and graph, were used to analyse the Characteristics variables of road traffic crashes in metropolitan Lagos. The distribution parttern of crash and casualty was also tested using Mann-kandell trent analysis. Result revealed that the pattern of changes in both cases and causality have no significant monotonic trends,for the crash the line is slightly up (+6.2) and casualty a slightly downward trend (~-5.3) . Frequency of crash occurrence is relatively high in the morning hours of 0501 and 1300 hours throughout the years except for the year 2017, and Saturday followed by Thursday were days of high frequency of crash. Multiple crashes are predominantly high throughout the period. The findings indicate insignificant temporal variability in crash occurrence and casualty patterns, and morning period and weekend (Saturday) records highest frequency of crashes. it is therefore recommend that policy makers and road safety agencies should focus on road traffic crash risk reduction and intervention programmes in reducing the occurrence and casualty of road crashes with particular attention on morning period and weekend.