Introduction
Car accidents are unexpected events that occur to motor vehicles causing damage of the vehicles, structures, fatalities and even death of the people in the vehicles. According to a research done by the United Nations, the rate of growth of accidents in the world continue to increase with over two million deaths and thirty million injuries reported annually.
The studies revealed that over seventy percent of the deaths that resulted from road accidents occurred in developing countries. These imply that automobile accidents are a major problem in developing counties stretching from regions of pacific Asia to many parts of Sub Sahara Africa which contribute to over fifty percent of these accidents.
The numbers of vehicles continue increasing every year and governments are responding by constructing modern roads that can facilitate smooth transportation of goods and people so as to realize economic growth and reduce accidents which are increasing dramatically. In fact, car accident are ranked second to the major killer disease AIDS in terms of causing deaths and lose of property and resources. As a result, government policies to increase economic empowerment among the people are destructed by car accidents.
Types of car accidents
There are different classifications of road accidents depending on where the damage has been done on your vehicle. When a car hits another and there are minor damages on the vehicle, the accident is referred to as a rear impact car accident. An example of such an accident is when a vehicle hits another from the back due to failure of the brakes.
When a car hits another for the side, the type of accident is referred to as side impact accident. It usually occurs when a vehicle enters another vehicles lane as a result of an abrupt stop and thereby skidding at a right angle. According to Abdelane (20), in the United States, more than a third of the accidents in the US are side impact accidents. When a vehicle hits another car or object in front it is said to have undergone head on collision. This type of accident not only happens to cars but also trains.
This type of accident is commonly encountered by drunk drivers and those drivers who dose while driving. This type of accident is most likely to occur when a car enters a road from a wrong direction. When a car is involved in an accident and it turns in a manner that it lays on its side or roof, it is said to have had a roll over accident. This type of accident normally happens to tall tracks (Obenski, 3).
Causes of car accidents
There are several factors that cause road accidents which comprise the following: majority of the accidents occur due the rise in the number of road users who don’t obey traffic rules, drivers who drive their cars carelessly and disobedience of the rules of traffic; the nature of the roads is also a major cause of road accidents.
The nature of infrastructure, construction of bridges which do not meet safety standards leading to defects on the road like potholes; improper maintenance of motor vehicles by the owners have caused many accidents. Some of the accidents that arise due to poor maintenance are due to failure of the breaks, improper alignment of the wheels thereby causing bursting, mechanical problems associated with the wheel, and failure of the headlights (Abdelane, 54).
Bad weather also contributes to the rise in the motor vehicle accidents. On a misty day, visibility on the road can be very bad. Cars on the road may end up colliding due to the failure of the drivers to notice vehicles in the front or back due to poor weather conditions. Other conditions of the weather that can lead to accidents growth is the presence of unexpected floods and ice on the roads.
These factors may make drivers notice their opponents late hence leading to collisions. Drivers may at times encounter distractions on the road as they drive, which may be within or outside the car. Some of the incidents arising from this error are when the attention of the driver is focused on a phone or a mirror or an interesting event outside the car while the car is in motion. It therefore follows that, anything causing the driver to concentrate outside the road is dangerous to the safety of the vehicle.
Sometimes, the designers of the roads may do a shoddy job in designing the road. This could be due to poor placements of the traffic controls like inappropriate placements of the traffic signs so that the view of the incoming traffic is blocked at risky corners of busy roads. In most cases, accidents arising from poor design are compensated by the government implying that both the owners of the vehicles and the State share the losses (Livneh, 99).
Solutions to car accidents
Brumitt (66) argued out that several measures can be adopted to ensure that there is reduction in the number of accidents. A lot of these measures have to do with government involvement in designing policies that guide road users but individual people must also take collective responsibility to avoid traffic offences.
Governments should establish bodies that oversee the overall implementation of set up policies like the National Road Safety Committee. The responsibility of the committee should target the following areas of concern: pile up pressure on all government departments and ministries to ensure that they give out guidelines that aim to minimize car accidents.
The committee should ensure that the lives of people are protected as well as protection of property from any losses arising from road accidents. Another effective control measure that can be taken to ensure that road accidents are reduced drastically is by keeping an accurate data base of the accidents and their causes so that it can be used to devise means of minimizing them. The records of the accident data system should be exact and consistent with assistance from established data collection systems.
By incorporating safety control measures in the school curriculum in the primary school level, a great deal will be reached in instilling safety measures to the younger generation so that they can acquire discipline of road safety measures right from initial stages of their lives to adulthood.
The authorities should ensure that only drivers who have been trained and certified drive on the road. In addition the authorities should ensure that people caught disobeying traffic rules are seriously punished by the law so as to instill discipline among the people (Brumitt, 122).
Conclusion
Finally, in order to attain excellent safety measures that will reduce accidents significantly, the government has to commit itself to provide funding to road safety, the private sector has to commit itself to offering technical assistance and people have to commit themselves to the safety measures.
Works Cited
Abdelane,Evans. Braking Deceleration of Motorcycle Riders: International Motorcycle Safety Conference. Oxford: Oxford University, 2001.
Brumitt, Meyers. “The Accident Reconstruction Network.” (2007). Web.
Livneh, Ceder. Relationships between road accidents and hourly traffic flow: Accident Analysis and Prevention. New Yolk: 2008.
Obenski, Kuyt. “National Transportation Safety Board.” (2006). Web.
Source Evaluation Report
Road accidents are becoming a major disaster in the world. According to Abdelane of Oxford University, “over one million people die and approximately thirty million get injuries as a result of road accidents in the world.” He also adds that “road accidents are identified as the second major killer of the human population after AIDS.”
Brumitt a research analyst at Bristol University, conducted a research and found out that road accidents are caused by road users who don’t obey traffic rules, poor infrastructure of the roads and defects on the vehicles such as break failure and tire bursts.
According to Obenski of the National Transportation Safety Board, several factors cause road accidents and there is no particular sequence: it can be due to over speeding, lack of attention, cell phones and other distracters, ignorance, lack of proper training and poor maintenance of the vehicles.
Livneh and his colleagues analyzed solutions of road accidents and suggested that “the effective solutions require the coordinated efforts of governments, international organizations and agencies, local authorities and good citizenship.” “Road accidents are unavoidable” says Livneh. “But risks of road accidents can be reduced by simple precautions and thinking ahead.”