Are Holidays or Festive Periods to blame for Seasonal Spikes in Road Traffic Accidents in Nigeria?

Abstract

Over the years, citizens have characteristically viewed festive and holiday seasons in Nigeria as a period when there are spikes in traffic and road crashes. These spike in road crashes have been ascribed to some spiritual or mystical powers which often possess the road ways especially the intercity or highways within the country. The paper examined the impact of holiday and festive periods on the recorded road traffic accident cases in Nigeria for a period ten years (2012 – 2021) using weekly data obtained from the Federal Road Safety Corps Office, the research adopted exploratory data analysis conducted on the Road Traffic accidents data suggests that the data is not normally distributed (Shapiro-Wilk = 0.94, p = .002) hence Kruskal-Wallis test -a non-parametric statistics equivalent of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was adopted for test of difference. The aim was to isolate the actual period when road accidents occurred most between ordinary day, non-festive holiday and festive holiday periods. National holiday and festive dates were marked on the data sheet and a hypothesis was tested. A Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted to compare the median ranks of three groups: Festive Holiday, Non- holiday, and Non Festive Holiday. The test revealed a significant difference among the groups (χ2(2) = 11.02, p = .004.). Post hoc tests using the Dunn-Bonferroni method showed that Festive Holiday (FH) and Non-holiday (NH) groups had a significantly different median rank (KW = 58.38, Mdn_FH = 220, Mdn_NH = 180, adj.p = .007). Similarly, the Festive Holiday and Non Festive Holiday (NFH) groups had a significantly different median rank (KW = 84.16, Mdn_FH = 220, Mdn_NFH = 177.5, adj. p = .017). However, there was no significant difference in median rank (Mdn) between Non-holiday and Non Festive Holiday groups (KW = 25.77, Mdn_NH = 180, Mdn_NFH = 177.5, adj. p = .948). The study concluded that most road traffic accidents occur during festive holidays.