On the Causes of Road Accidents: Fuzzy TOPSIS

Abstract

Increasing number of vehicles, lack of awareness among road users and many other causes are said to be linked to road accidents. However no specific literature was found to rank causes of road accidents based on fuzzy data of multi-criteria decision making. This paper proposes a ranking of five selected causes linked to road accidents. Types of vehicles involved in road accidents are considered as the criteria for ranking. The imprecision or vagueness inherited the causes has led the application of fuzzy sets theory to deal with ranking problems. Data in form of linguistic variables were collected from three authorized personnel of three Malaysian Government agencies. The multi criteria decision making, fuzzy TOPSIS was applied in computational procedures. From the analysis, it shows that registered vehicle was first in ranking and road environment as the last in ranking. The ranking is drawn using the magnitude of closeness coefficient of TOPSIS. It was indicated that the causes of road accidents can be ranked based on linguistic judgments.