Risk factors associated with road traffic injuries at the prone-areas in Kampala city: a retrospective cross-sectional study

Background: road traffic injuries (rtis) pose a disproportionate public health burden in the lowand middle-income countries (lmics) like uganda, with 85% of all the fatalities and 90% of alldisability-adjusted life years lost reported worldwide. of all rtis which are recorded in uganda,50% of cases happen in kampala —the capital city of uganda and the nearby cities. identifyingthe rti prone-areas and their associated risk factors can help to inform road safety andprevention measures aimed at reducing rtis, particularly in emerging cities such as kampala.methods: this study was based on a retrospective cross-sectional design to analyze a five year(2011 – 2015) traffic crash data of the uganda police force.results: accordingly, 60 rti prone-areas were identified to exist across the kampala. they wereranked as low and high risk areas; 41 and 19, respectively and with the majority of the latterbased in the main city center. the bivariate analysis showed a significant association between identified prone-areas and population flow (or: 4.89, p–value: 0.01) and traffic flow time (or:9.06, p–value: 0.01). on the other hand, the multivariate regression analysis only showed trafficflow time as the significant predictor (or: 6.27, p–value: 0.02) at identified rti prone-areas.conclusions: the measures devised to mitigate rti in an emerging city like kampala should studythoroughly the patterns of traffic and population flow to help to optimize the use of availableresources for effective road safety planning, injury prevention and sustainable transport systems.