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Abstract Road traffic accidents (RTAs) and road traffic injuries (RTIs) are a major cause of death and disability globally with a disproportionate number occurring in developing countries, and have become a major public health concern worldwide. Injuries and disabilities which result from RTAs have enormous economic and social consequences for the injured person, the family, the community, and the country. They are estimated to cost governments in the developing countries between 1% and 2% of the Gross National Production (GNP) annually. By the year 2020, if current trends continue, the annual numbers of deaths and disabilities from RTIs will rank 3rd on WHO’s list of leading contributors to the global burden of disease and injury after they were number nine on the list in 1990. There are various indicators of RTAs which are important tools not just for measuring the magnitude of the problem but also for setting targets and assessing performance. Though road traffic injury statistics are used as measures of road safety, they are often inadequate and may even be misleading. This highlights the need for existing measures to be refined and new ones to be explored. |