Econometric Modeling of Traffic Accidents in Ecuador

Abstract

Traffic accidents constitute a major public health problem in the world. According to estimates of the World Health Organization (WHO, 2017), nearly 1.3 million people die annually from causes related to traffic accidents. Additionally, according to the same organization, annually, between 20 and 50 million people suffer injuries or become disabled as a result of a traffic accident. In Ecuador, traffic accidents constitute a major economic, social and public health problem, being one of the main causes of death. In recent years, the death rate from traffic accidents has been increasing, making Ecuador one of the countries with the highest mortality rate in Latin America. In this article, traffic accidents are analyzed from two perspectives: i) forecast of traffic accidents, ii) human and physical determinants of greater incidence in traffic accidents considering the four types of vehicles most used in Ecuador: motorcycles, lightweight vehicles, commercial, passenger and cargo vehicles. For this, an ARIMA model was estimated following the Box-Jenkins methodology and a multinomial logit model, respectively. The data was provided by the National Police and corresponds to the period 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.