Role of human factors in road accidents

Aim and Based on W. H. O documentation deaths in roads encompass 25% of all accidental deaths. There is a general assumption that human factors involves in 70-90% of road accidents، in 60% of cases as main and in 95% as one of the influential factors. Methods and Materials: In this review article we searched Medline and Cochrane library in the range of 1990-2009 with road accident، road injuries، driving behavior، human factors related to road accidents and psychology of accidents keywords. In this article the role of human factors on road accidents are divided in two groups of: factors reduce driving ability and factors causing driving high risk behavior. In the following we presented the distribution of human errors in driving based on various demographic variables. Human factors related to road accident can be divided in two groups of: 1) factors related to human developmental stage and are out of voluntary control of drivers. 2) Factors related to personality style that interact in a complex form and usually co-occurs in a single person. Control of human factors in traffic management needs a comprehensive and multistage approach including general and specific group oriented educations and legal restriction for specific drivers.