Empirical study determining key factors for road traffic deaths

Road traffic deathsare one of the main reasons for fatalities, killing over 1.35 m people worldwide in 2016. Attempts at shedding light on reducing fatality rates have, so far, not fully exploited the empirical data available. This article presents a cross-sectional study including 162 countries worldwide for the year 2016 analysing 15 different, potentially relevant variables. It is found that the main factors reducing road fatalities are public health care expenditure, road quality, secondary schooling, the rule of law andthe tariffs on import vehicles. Furthermore, the results present no evidence of lower fatalities in high income countries, thus, contradicting the WHO’s claim. Also, countries with high alcohol intake do not present statisticallyhigher fatality rates. Exemplary calculations for Malaysia in 2016 show that fatalities could have been reduced from 7 152 deaths to 2 471 by decreasing the average tariff of 97.5% on imported vehicles to 10%.