ON THE BAYESIAN MODELING OF ROAD ACCIDENTS DUE TO VEHICLE TYPE IN OYO STATE NIGERIA

Transportation plays an important role in the day to day activities of human race. Road, rail, water and air are the four major forms of transportation in Nigeria. Road transportation is the most common means of movement in Oyo State and this has raise the likelihood of the occurrence of road traffic accident even posing a serious problem that needs serious attention. Road traffic accidents would Continually increase if tangible efforts are not made to tackle is problem. In Oyo state, the epicenter of the western Nigeria, road transportation is the most popular means of transportation. Of concern is the accidents recorded daily on the roads. This study takes into account the series of accidents caused on the state roads due to vehicle types. Seven vehicle types were considered due to the data available. Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA), a variable selection approach, was used to handle uncertainty in the model selection process. Several classical approach like time series have been used in analysing road accidents but few had explored the Bayesian approach via BMA route. A uniform model prior was used with a numeric g-prior to improve the predictive performance. The trend of accidents were observed for a period of 15 years from (2006 2020). 78% of the models were visited and using the Posterior Inclusion Probability results (99.546%), it was seen that the accidents that occurred via private cars was the predominant. It is the most important in modeling vehicle type accidents in Oyo State Nigeria. Also, accidents for 2023 and 2024 were predicted using the posterior predictive distribution. It is imperative for concerned authorities (Federal Road Safety Corps amongst others) in the state to look into the issue of private car owners in the state.