International Journal of Civil & Environmental Engineering IJCEE-IJENS Vol:13 No:05 9 136205-8484-IJCEE-IJENS © October 2013 IJENS I J E N S Abstract—Road traffic accidents are considered among the leading causes of death locally and globally. In Jordan, road traffic accidents were responsible for about 4.5% of fatalities during the year 2007 and were ranked as the third cause of death in the country during the year 2010. Jordan suffers from a serious traffic accidents problem that must get more attention from the decision makers. A total of 1,040,112 accidents have occurred over the study period (1998- 2010) with an average of 80,008 accidents/year. Traffic accidents in Jordan were continuously increasing over the study period as a result of continuous increase in population and auto ownership represented by the motorization level (number of registered vehicles/1000 population). This study has utilized the traffic accidents data in Jordan for thirteen years period to mainly investigate their trends and characteristics over that period. Based on the available data, traffic accidents were analyzed considering several variables including accident type, driver age, speed limit, time of the day, day of the week, month of the year, weather condition, pavement surface condition, and severity level. Index Term— traffic accident, Jordan, accidents trends, traffic model I. INTRODUCTION Road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for young people and the eighth leading cause of all deaths globally with an estimated 1.24 million people who are killed in road crashes each year [1]. About 85% of annual deaths are occurred in the developing countries. Males and those between 15 and 44 years old are the most affected parties with traffic accidents [2]. Traffic accidents cost countries about 1 to 2% of their gross national products [3]. Jordan is considered as one of the highest world countries in terms of traffic accidents, which were responsible for about 4.5% of fatalities during the year 2007 and ranked as the third cause of death during the year 2010. Furthermore, It was found that the costs of road accidents in Jordan were estimated to be about US$ 146.3 million in 1996 [4] and increased to US$ 440 million in 2010 [5]. Therefore, this problem is taken seriously by the governmental authorities that are concerned with traffic and road safety. In 2007, the government of Jordan has applied a new traffic law that intensified police activities and applied very high fines on the most dangerous traffic violations, and shortly replaced it by another law with reduced, but still relatively high, traffic violation fines in 2008 [6]. Furthermore, the Jordanian government has implemented a traffic safety strategy starting the year 2008 which included the following measures: 1. Implementing the new 2008 traffic law 2. Increasing enforcement measures and quality of traffic police 3. Coordination with other traffic safety agencies 4. Implementing intensive traffic awareness activities through media and educational institutions. It is important to study the trend, characteristics and to define the causes of accidents periodically, furthermore, to define the target groups for further study and to provide data to be used by policy makers to adopt the appropriate policies regarding this serious problem. This study is conducted to mainly show the trend of traffic accidents, the number of fatalities and their characteristics over the study period from 1998 to 2010 (13 years period) for the all traffic accidents. Traffic accidents in this study were analyzed based on type, time, day, month, weather condition, pavement surface condition, age, and speed limit. II. LITERATURE REVIEW Several studies were conducted in the past to investigate the characteristics and trends of traffic accidents in Jordan. Reference [7] revealed that the problem of pedestrian accidents in Jordan is growing and becoming more serious over the years. The study was conducted on pedestrian accidents for three years period (1998-2000) considering pedestrian characteristics and the factors of time, location, weather and pavement surface conditions, faults from pedestrian and drivers and speed limit. The study revealed that elders and children have the highest contribution in pedestrian Traffic Accidents Trends and Characteristics in Jordan Bashar AL-Omari 1 , Khalid Ghuzlan 2* , Hala Hasan 3 1 Associate Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Jordan University of Science and Technology (E-mail: bahomari@just.edu.jo) 2 Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Jordan University of Science and Technology (E-mail: kaghuzlan@just.edu.jo) 3 Research Assistant, Civil Engineering Department, Jordan University of Science and Technology * Corresponding author