Weights And Ranks Of Causes Of Road Accidents Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (Ahp) In Dodoma Region

ABSTRACT

The study of WEIGHTS AND RANKS OF CAUSES OF ROAD ACCIDENTS USING ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP) IN DODOMA REGION has been conducted in order to provide a broad understanding to the seriousness of problem of Road Accidents in Tanzania. Since the problem of road accidents in Tanzania is highly increasing year after year, various preventive measures have been taken to reduce the rate of road accidents. Thus it is important to understand the actual causes which have high contribution to the road accidents. The main objective of this study is to propose weights and ranks of six selected causes with respect to five categories of motor vehicles associated with road traffic accidents in Tanzania. The five categories of motor vehicles are Lorries, Short Distance Passenger vehicles, Long Distance Passenger vehicles, Private Cars and Motorcycles while the selected causes are over speeding, reckless driving, Proper Use of Light during darkness, Adverse Road Conditions, Drivers‟ Behaviour and Drivers‟ Knowledge. Analytic Hierarchal procedure (AHP) is used as an analyzing tool. Through AHP questionnaire, data were collected from five experienced persons (experts) in road accident analysis. The experts rate the pair-wise comparison in measurement scale from one to five. The comparison scales were analyzed to compute the weights of road accident causes. The results of the study revealed that over speeding which means driving faster than limited speed is ranked as the highest cause in road accidents contribution with the weights 0.2905 followed by reckless driving (with weights 0.2812) while Adverse Road Condition is ranked as the lowest among the six selected road accident causes in this study. vi TABLE