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Background: Road traffic accident is now becoming a public health problem in the world and resulting in human tragedy. Globally, about 1.2 million people are killed in road traffic accident every year and 20 to 50 million more are injured and/or disabled. These injuries account for 2.1% of global mortality. Low- and middle-income countries account for about 85% of the deaths and 90% of the DALYs lost annually due to road traffic accident. Without appropriate action, by 2020, road traffic injuries are predicted to be the third leading contributor to the global burden of disease. Despite having low road network density and vehicle ownership, Ethiopia has a relatively high accident records. Road accidents are concentrated in few of the regions in the country. The capital City of Addis Ababa and Oromia Region account for 58 per cent of all fatal accidents and two thirds of all injuries Objective: To assess magnitude, trends and associated factors of road traffic accident from Akaki to Adama. Method: Retrospective study was conducted from police reports between July 2007 and June 2012 retrieved from the 8 police stations in the study area. Result: A total of 2335 accidents have been registered in the study area from July 2007 to June 2012. Of those 389 (16.7%) resulted in death (fatal accident), 316 (13.5%) resulted in severe injuries, 290 (12.4%) resulted in slight injuries. The rest 1316 (56.4%) accidents resulted in property damage. During the study period, 1745 individuals were affected as a result of the accident. Of those 515 (29.5%) victims died, while 549 (31.5%) sustained severe injury and the rest slight injury. The major reason for the accidents were over speeding accounting for 836 (36.1%) followed by careless driving 573 (24.8%) and failure to give priority 507 (21.9%) for other vehicles and pedestrians. Being Female driver, accident occurring at mid night, accident caused by over speeding, failure to give priority and vehicles having technical problem are strong determinants of fatality. Conclusions and recommendations Trend of road traffic accident was steadily increased in magnitude from July 2007-June 2012 in the study area which calls for urgent interventions. Enforcing drivers to obey traffic rules and strong enforcement of speed limit appear to be the most critical parts of interventions.
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