A Thirty-Two Year Review of Deaths from Motor Accidents in Lagos State, Nigeria

Using mostly secondary data on vehicular accidents obtained from the Nigeria Police Force and Federal Road Safety Commission, the study examined a thirty-two year review of deaths from road traffic accidents (19702001) in Lagos State. The reported deaths from road traffic accidents in the 20 Local Government Areas of Lagos State were compared using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The result showed that for the two factors, Local Government Areas and years, the F-calculated of 19.62 and 9.72 respectively were higher than the F-tabular of 1.57 and 1.46 respectively at 0.05 level of significance. It then implies that the means for each of the factors, reported deaths from road traffic accidents across the 20 Local Government Areas of Lagos State and across different years were significantly different. The result of the multiple regression analysis was 0.28. This implies that the proportion of variation in the dependent variable (i.e. deaths from road traffic accidents) explained by the independent variables (i.e. length of roads, presence of road safety and population) was 28%. Based on the findings, recommendations were proffered on how to reduce the phenomenon of deaths from traffic accidents in Lagos State.