Road Traffic Accidents in Saudi Arabia: An ARDL Approach and Multivariate Granger Causality

The present paper examine the nexus between road traffic accident (RTA) and some relevant variables in Saudi Arabia over the period 1971- 2012, using the autoregressive distributed lag ARDL model (Pesaran and Shin, 1999) for co-integration in Saudi Arabia, with the co-integration test. Results show that the variables are co-integrated in Saudi Arabia, moreover, the overall Granger causality results present that road traffic accidents, population and GDP, road mails, registered vehicles, and the number of driver license are Granger-causes each other in Saudi Arabia. With these findings, we affirm that there is a strong relationship and effect between road traffic accidents and its population, GDP, road mails, registered vehicles, and the number of driver license. The findings suggest that the ECTt-1 coefficients are negative signed and statistically significant in all VECMs, implying that there is bi-directional causality between the variables of interest in the long run.