Road Crashes: An Anthropic Pandemic, Case of the City of Lubumbashi

Abstract

Introduction: Road traffic crashes are a significant public health challenge in view of the high morbidity and mortality for which they are responsible. Objective: This study aims to describe the frequency and profile of road traffic crashes in the city of Lubumbashi. Methods: A retrospective descriptive study was conducted between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2017. Included are all cases of vehicles registered with the road safety police, involved in a traffic crash. The data were processed using SPSS version 23 software (SPSS, Armonk, NY). Results: The study focused on 3495 cases of road traffic crashes registered with the road traffic police service from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2017. These crashes were caused mainly by male drivers (98.6%). January had a large number of road crashes (9.2%) followed by that of October (9.1%); with 17.9% of the cases, crashes were on a Sunday. In 10% of road crashes there were fatalities recorded. Night driving; driving downtown; the use of public transport vehicles as well as the fact of driving on a long straight road predisposed to fatal road crashes in Lubumbashi (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Roads are designed to allow human movement; however there is major risk of injury and death particularly in holiday months and at night. Awareness campaigns can be used as a tool to reduce the pandemic of life-threatening traffic accidents. Some health education channels like schools, churches, political parties, socio-cultural associations, trade unions can be useful for this purpose (road prevention).