Tulu Getu Segni, King Mark, Bekri Helen
Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, School of Civil Engineering, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety-Queensland (CARRS-Q), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Int J Inj Contr Saf Promot. 2025 Mar;32(1):52-60. doi: 10.1080/17457300.2024.2443979. Epub 2024 Dec 21.
The management of road safety relies on data from road traffic crashes to identify priorities, monitor trends and evaluate interventions. Both police and hospital records are important sources of information on crashes that result in injury; however, both are known to be incomplete, with the quality and completeness of data being lower in low- and middle-income countries. The aim of this study is to estimate the magnitude of the underreporting of crashes in Dire Dawa City, Ethiopia, as a case study that may be applicable elsewhere. In addition, it gives an opportunity to understand the discrepancies between police and hospital records in Dire Dawa City and how the data systems work in the city. This research compared data on traffic collisions resulting in injury from July 2014 to February 2019 across police and hospital databases and used the capture-recapture technique to estimate the actual numbers of crashes and the degree of under-recording in both sources. It was found that there was substantial under-recording in both sources, with the degree of under-recording varying by urban/rural area, gender, age, road user category and injury severity, as well as by source within these variables. The police figures were lower than the hospital figures, and in all cases but three (rural areas, passengers and serious injury crashes), both sources had more unmatched than matched cases. In addition, the analysis discovered undocumented deaths and injuries in both databases. To summarize, police capture more death instances, but hospitals capture more serious injury cases. The capture-recapture strategy predicted a greater number of instances than currently recorded by police and hospitals. This demonstrates a major under-reporting of crash data from both sources. This level of under-recording can lead to less effective road safety management and evaluation. Replication of this research in other parts of Ethiopia could provide information on local practices that are more or less successful in reducing the level of under-recording, and such results may have implications for other countries with similar problems.
道路安全管理依赖于道路交通事故数据来确定工作重点、监测趋势并评估干预措施。警方记录和医院记录都是导致人员受伤的交通事故信息的重要来源；然而，众所周知，这两者都不完整，低收入和中等收入国家的数据质量和完整性更低。本研究的目的是估计埃塞俄比亚德雷达瓦市交通事故漏报的程度，作为一个可能适用于其他地方的案例研究。此外，它还提供了一个机会，来了解德雷达瓦市警方记录和医院记录之间的差异，以及该市数据系统的运作方式。本研究比较了2014年7月至2019年2月警方和医院数据库中导致人员受伤的交通碰撞数据，并使用捕获-再捕获技术来估计实际的事故数量以及两个来源中记录不足的程度。研究发现，两个来源都存在大量记录不足的情况，记录不足的程度因城乡地区、性别、年龄、道路使用者类别和伤害严重程度而异，也因这些变量中的来源不同而有所差异。警方的数据低于医院的数据，除了三个案例（农村地区、乘客和重伤事故）外，在所有情况下，两个来源中不匹配的案例都多于匹配的案例。此外，分析还发现两个数据库中都存在未记录的死亡和受伤情况。总而言之，警方记录的死亡案例更多，但医院记录的重伤案例更多。捕获-再捕获策略预测的案例数量比警方和医院目前记录的要多。这表明两个来源的事故数据都存在严重漏报的情况。这种记录不足的程度可能会导致道路安全管理和评估的效果降低。在埃塞俄比亚其他地区重复这项研究，可以提供有关当地在减少记录不足水平方面或多或少取得成功的做法的信息，这样的结果可能对其他存在类似问题的国家有启示意义。
