A Comparative Appraisal of Roadway Accident For Asia-Pacific Countries

This paper describes an attempt to shed some light on road safety in asia pacific regionby characterizing and assessing its road accidents. the relevant national road accident data wereextracted from centralized data sources of international agencies. due to data incompleteness andmissing values, 21 asia pacific countries, presenting more than half of the world’s population, wereselected for detailed analysis. the study database consisted of 7 variables, covering years 1980 and1995. the univariate and multivariate statistical analyses for the selected countries showed interestingresults and relations for the selected variables. accident rates, reflecting road accident risk andintensity, were developed, evaluated and modelled. deploying multi-criteria analysis techniques suchas data envelopment analysis, dea, provided appropriate bases for cross-sectional appraisal andtarget setting. as safety is one of the aspects of sustainable transportation, arc elasticity of roadaccident variables with respect to demographic, economic and road transportation supply variablesthrough time were developed and analysed. based on the developed elasticities, a composite roadsafety sustainability index was suggested. the appraisal of road accident for the asia pacificcountries suggested that road accident has posed a creeping public safety crisis for the region. thestudy showed that the magnitude of road accident problem varied considerably among countries. thestudy offers the methodology and conclusions of a comparative macroscopic road accident appraisalfor the asia pacific region.