COST EVALUATION OF ROAD TRAFFIC ACCIDENT IN NIGERIA USING HUMAN CAPITAL APPROACH

Nigeria experiences the highest rate of road traffic accidents resulting in fatalities and various levels of injuries. On Abuja-Lokoja road, traffic accident takes the lion’s share of the risk having highest number of vehicular accidents withcorresponding fatalities and injurieswhich has a great impact on cost and the socio-economic development of the society. It is therefore necessary to gauge the monetary value of these losses in order to highlight the extent of damage incurred to society as a whole. This research is focused on using Gross-Output Model or Human Capital Approach to compute the cost of traffic accident on Abuja-Lokoja road. The aim of this research is to formulate a model that can be used for estimating the total cost of road accidents at all levels of severity. The extent of injury levels, property damaged and general cost resultingfrom an accident using secondary data were obtained from thePolices, Research and Statistics department of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) for a period of eleven years (2000-2010).The research was carried out with the aid of questionnaires and interview. The data collected were analyzed using the percentage frequency distribution table and the result was used to cost the property damage cost and the medical cost. The accident cost was decomposed and quantified based on the accident severity levels.The cost per fatal accident isN 24, 853, 524, the cost per of serious injuries accident isN633.520, and the cost of per minor accident isN 10, 575. 36, the total human cost isN 55, 714, 330,477, the total properties cost isN 890, 067, 000, the police administrative cost isN65, 446, 757. 76 and the total accident cost isN 56,669,844,234.Therefore the cost per vehicle per kilometer is N60,804.03Km-1, the cost per kilometer is N318,369,911 Km-1for Abuja-Lokojaroad. This result is in agreement with other researches carried out using gross output method.

Accident can be defined as an unpleasant incident that happens unexpectedly; it can also be defined as an incident that happens by chance. Road traffic accident is therefore an unexpected phenomenon that occurs as a result of the use or operation of vehicles, and trucks, on thehighway, when a traffic accident occurs it may be fatal, resulting in deaths of road users (passenger, drivers, or pedestrians); serious when there is no deaths but a person is seriously injured, and minor when it is not serious enough as to cause substantial hardship. When there is no fatality, serious injury, minor or slight injury and only vehicular damage or property damage occurs, it is referred to as damage only accident.

Most citizens use the road at one point in time or the other, and therefore face a risk of road accident. Through road accidents, hundreds of productive citizens die every year. By these, many families have lost their bread winners, many wives have become widows and many husbands rendered widowers, countless number of children have become orphans many songs of victory and jubilations had been turned into morning and wailing overnight. Many dreams are shattered; plans and aspirations are laid to rest in the graves all in name of road accident.