Road traffic injuries cause considerable economic losses to individuals, their families, and to nations as a whole. These losses arise from the cost of treatment as well as lost productivity for those killed or disabled by their injuries, and for family members who need to take time off work or school to care for the injured. Road traffic crashes cost most countries 3% of their gross domestic product.

In this project, we will be analyzing data related to road accidents, which can be utilized to study accident-prone conditions and also helps understand the factors that influence road fatalities.

The Data

The dataset covers all traffic accidents in 2021 and 2022 and contains over 307,000 records. The data contains a wide range of information from date of the accident, severity of the accident, light conditions, road surface conditions, road type, type of vehicle and number of casualties.

Data Analysis

The data was analyzed using Excel. Month and Year columns were created using the accident date column.

The following are some of the factors that influence accidents:

1. Road Type

Here, we are checking if the road type; Single Carriageway, Dual Carriageway, one way street, roundabout and a slip road has an effect on the number of casualties.

Single carriageway causes the highest number of casualties, while slip road had the least number of casualties.

2. Road Surface

I checked if the road surface; Wet, Dry and snow have an effect on the number of casualties.

Dry surface has the highest number of casualties, followed by wet surface, then snow / ice surface having the least number of casualties.

3. Light Conditions

I checked if the light conditions; Dark vs Daylight, has an impact on the number of casualties.

4. Monthly Casualties Trend

Here, I checked the monthly casualty patterns between January to December.

The number of fatal casualties steadily increases from February till reaches a peak in May.

5. 2021 vs 2022

Here, I checked the severeness of the casualties between 2021 and 2022.

The year 2021 experienced more casualties compared to the year 2022. 53.16% of all the casualties happened in 2021 while 46.84% casualties happened in 2022.

SUMMARY

From the analysis of the dataset, we can conclude that:

1. There was lesser casualties in the year 2021 compared to 2022, across all months.

2. Single carriageway causes the highest number of casualties (74.45%) of the total casualties, while slip road had the least number of casualties.

3. Dry surface has the highest number of casualties (66.9%), followed by wet surface (27.6%), then snow / ice surface (5.5%) having the least number of casualties.

4. 72.98% of all casualties happens when the area is lit, either during the daylight or it’s dark, but the lights are lit, while 27.07% of the casualties happens when its dark.

5. 76.7% of all casualties  happened during the day and 23.3% happened at night.