Education, human error, and road crash risk: An empirical investigation in the Indian states

• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Author: Devi Prasad Dash,Narayan Sethi,Aruna Kumar Dash
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2163

ACADEMIC PAPER

Education, human error, and road crash risk: An empirical

investigation in the Indian states

Devi Prasad Dash

1

| Narayan Sethi

2

| Aruna Kumar Dash

3

1

Department of Economics and Public Policy,

IIM Rohtak, Rohtak, India

2

Department of Humanities and Social

Science, National Institute of Technology (NIT)

Rourkela, Rourkela, India

3

Department of Economics, ICFAI Business

School (IBS), Hyderabad, India

Correspondence

Narayan Sethi, Department of Humanities and

Social Science, National Institute of

Technology (NIT), Rourkela, Odisha-769008,

India.

Email: sethin@nitrkl.ac.in

This study examines the road accident rates from 29 Indian states and 6 Union

Territories during 2006–2015. In this paper, we have employed several empirical

techniques such as regression, generalized method of moments (GMM), and

threshold regression models to examine how education and attitude of the

drivers impact the road accident rates. In our empirical analysis, we demonstrate

that lawless driving is found to be positive and statistically significant while

incorporating both state and year effects. We also find some interesting result in

the context of education and road accidents. We notice positive relationship

betweenhighereducationandroadaccident rates across Indian states, which

tells us highly educated people are more prone to road accidents as compared

with less educated people. In the threshold analysis, the study discovers the pos-

itive relationship between road injury and accidents caused by people with

higher education, in cases of considering road injury rate from drunken driving

as the threshold variable. There appears to be a large number of behavioral

issues emanating from higher education, which contributes significantly to the

road accident rates in the Indian states. Hence, there is a need for policy

intervention.

1|INTRODUCTION

Globally 1.3 million people die on the road every year and 50 million

suffer injuries (OECD, 2017). Around 90% of road traffic deaths occur

in the low- and middle-income countries, although these countries

have only 54% of the world's vehicles (United Nations Conference on

Trade and Development [UNCTAD, 2017]). Out of 10 lives lost in

traffic, nine are lost from low-and middle-income countries. The

World Health Organization (WHO) report (2015) shows that 68 coun-

tries have witnessed a rise in the number of road traffic fatalities since

2010, of which 84% are from low- and middle-income countries. The

majority of victims are between 15 and 29 years in low-income coun-

tries. The African region faces highest road traffic injury death rates in

the world followed by the Eastern Mediterranean region. Among the

high-income countries, the lowest rates are in the European Region.

The United Kingdom has been successful in reducing road fatalities,

and has the second lowest road fatality rate worldwide with only 2.9

deaths per 100,000 populations recorded by the WHO in 2015. Even

within high-income countries, people from lower socioeconomic

backgrounds are more likely to be involved in road traffic crashes and

living with long-term adverse health consequences. According to

WHO, this is largely due to the fact that the development of infra-

structure, policies, and enforcement measures has not kept pace with

the increase in vehicle use. If we will compare between urban and

rural areas, around 40–50% of traffic fatalities occur in urban areas

globally (Global Mobility Report, 2017). According to WHO, road traf-

fic accidents cause a loss of 3% of GDP in many developed countries

and 5% of GDP for low- and middle-income countries. Road collisions

incur huge economic costs at a national level, which includes a burden

on the health, insurance, and legal systems.

The causes of road accidents are multidimensional such as

human/driver behavior (includes negligence, over speeding, overtak-

ing, traffic violation, alcohol and drugs intake, and pedestrians on the

street), vehicle-related factors (like faulty brakes and tires), quality of

Received: 12 March 2020 Revised: 14 April 2020 Accepted: 22 April 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2163

J Public Affairs. 2021;21:e2163. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 1of10

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2163