Analysis of Traffic Accidents in Saudi Arabia: Safety Effectiveness Evaluation of SAHER Enforcement System

Traffic accidents have become a threatening socioeconomic concern worldwide. The global annual deaths and injuries toll from traffic accidents are estimated to be around 1.35 and 50 million, respectively. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has witnessed alarming traffic safety issues during the past few decades. Recently, the government has introduced several proactive traffic safety interventions and policies, such as the induction of SAHER traffic management; however, the situations seem to have marginally improved. The main objective of this study is to analyze the pattern of traffic accidents in KSA and to assess the safety evaluation of the proposed SAHER traffic enforcement initiative. An analytic framework consisting of descriptive statistical analysis, geographic information system-based spatial analysis, statistical significance tests such as analysis of variance, and paired t -tests were conducted to evaluate the variations in traffic safety conditions in before-and-after SAHER deployment scenarios. Statistical analysis revealed that distracted driving and overspeeding consistently accounted for a significant proportion of the reported accidents, and variations in traffic accident frequencies over the years were statistically significant. This analysis also showed that the predominant accident types in KSA are vehicular collisions, fixed objects, and run-off accidents. For severity analysis, normalization of accident data was done based on the population of respective regions in KSA. The results indicated that the mean values of various traffic safety measures or accident attribute categories, such as accident occurrence, injury, and fatality rates, tend to reduce steadily in the latter part of the study period. It was found that the Northern border and Eastern regions had the highest accident rates, while Aseer, Al-Baha, and Tabouk Provinces had the most prominent injury and fatality rates. Analysis within and outside the major cities revealed that although accidents were concentrated more inside the cities, injury and fatality rates for accidents that occurred outside the cities were significantly high. A before-and-after study for SAHER effectiveness evaluation indicated that while the average reduction in different accident patterns was not statistically significant, the upward trend of both accident rates and fatalities was controlled to some extent. Several suitable policy recommendations are suggested based on the findings of the study.