Citation

Zhang J, Garrick NW, Atkinson-Palombo C, Ahangari H. J. Transp. Saf. Secur. 2017; 9(Suppl 1): 83-102.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Southeastern Transportation Center, and Beijing Jiaotong University, Publisher Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/19439962.2016.1201876

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The authors quantify the relationship between traffic fatalities and the motorization rate in China using death registration data for two groups of cities in China (17 large cities and 21 small/medium cities) from 2002 to 2010. Smeed's model is applied to compare the relationship in China to that in other industrialized countries during their early stages of motorization. The study has two principal findings. First, the fatality rate per vehicle decreases with the increase in motorization, a pattern that is consistent with the relationship that Smeed derived for industrialized countries. However, motorization and fatality rate per capita exhibits no clear trend. A second finding is that road safety conditions differ in large cities compared to small/medium cities. A series of ANOVA tests are unable to identify key variables responsible for these different patterns because the within-group differences for gross domestic product per capita, population density, and vehicle per 1,000 people are very large.

FINDINGS suggest that (1) though traffic fatality rate per vehicle in China decreased, levels are still very high; (2) besides motorization level, health care systems, car technology and cultural factors have potential linkage to traffic fatalities. Making more data available for individual cities would help stakeholders better identify the causes and potential remedies for this crucial safety issue.

Language: en