Road traffic accident rate as an indicator of the quality of life

The paper considers the issues devoted to assessing the connection between the quality of life and road traffic accident rate in different countries. The hypothesis put forward in the paper is based on the idea that the organization and functioning of the state road traffic safety management system and the outcome characteristics of road traffic accident rate in the road complex are closely related and are derived from the level of development of non-governmental institutions in a particular country. In order to determine how true this hypothesis is, the author carried out statistical studies of the relations between the estimates of the Quality of Life presented for 60 countries in the US News & World Report and the Human Risk indicators estimated for these countries. This indicator proposed by R. Smeed in 1949 for assessing the state of affairs in the field of road safety allows us to evaluate adequately the position of countries in the world ranking of road traffic accident rate. The research aims to establish a regularity that identifies the statistical relationship between the characteristics of the quality of life and human risk (by R. Smeed). The method of construction of correlation-regression models of the processes under consideration is used to achieve this goal. It has been established that there exists a noticeable inverse statistical relationship between the variables of the Quality of Life in different countries (according to the US News & World Report) and Human Risk (according to the World Health Organization). The paper discusses reasons for a decline in road traffic accident rate when the quality of life becomes better. The main conclusion of the study lies in the understanding that there exists a strong cause and effect relationship between the level of development of social institutions and the level of transport culture of the population; this relationship is implemented in the form of specific cases of transport-related behavior of drivers, forming in the end a certain road traffic accident rate.