BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Road traffic accidents (RTAs) affect populations all over the world; different local factors influence the causes of RTA in specific regions. The causes of RTAs’ among others include human or driver errors, vehicle characteristics, traffic infrastructures including engineering design, road maintenance and traffic regulation. Driver attitude including road courtesy and behavior, driving under the influence of drugs especially alcohol, male sex, use of seat belts, driver age (teenage drivers and elderly drivers) etc., are among the recognized human factors. It is thought that globally 1.4 million people are killed in RTAs and about 20 million to 50 million people are injured or disabled from the effect of RTAs. Unchecked, by the year 2020, RTAs will rank third of all causes of morbidity and mortality globally. Of worry though is that RTA related fatalities seem to increase with gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in lower income countries (including Ghana) and decrease with GDP per capita in wealthy countries. Globally the economic impact of RTAs is relatively huge. It is estimated that US $518 billion is spent globally on RTAs’, with US $65 billion being spent in low and middle income countries (LAMIC), this amount being reported as spent in LAMIC being bigger than what these countries receive per year, in development aid. The public health impact of RTAs’ prompted the world health organization (WHO) to focus attention in 2004 on a global campaign to curb this growing public health burden.
