Factors of road accident compensation and their relative importance: A case study of India

Road accidents have become a global problem and have been widely addressed in various reports and research. However, the detrimental impacts of road accidents are rarely discussed. In developed countries, the fatality rate due to road accidents is fairly low and the mechanism to compensate the victims is comparatively robust, on the other hand, the fatality rate due to road accidents in developing countries is quite high and the compensation mechanism is quite abject. In view of the same, this paper is an attempt to look into the various parameters that are to be used to provide compensation to road accident victims. In this paper experts from different domains were selected. which included road safety experts, medical experts, rehabilitation center pundits, economists, sociologists, Insurance experts, and trauma center experts. These experts were interviewed to weigh the parameters of the road accident compensation equation. To evaluate the data and determine the components' ranking, the technique applies the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Based on the findings of this paper it can be said that the most important factor that needs to be taken into account is victims’ related costs while the least important factor as per the findings of the paper is cost related to property damage.