Road Safety Performance

This book provides traffic safety researchers and practitioners with an international and multi-disciplinary compendium of theoretical and methodological concepts relevant to the research and application of Traffic Safety Culture aiming towards a vision of zero traffic fatalities.

This review examines why the Russian Federation has the highest road death rate of all ECMT member countries and what can be done about it.

The ECMT's comprehensive peer review of road safety in Lithuania.

Transport systems are facing an impossible dilemma: satisfy an increasing demand for mobility of people and goods, while decreasing their fossil-energy requirements and preserving the environment. Additionally, transport has an opportunity to evolve in a changing world, with new services, technologies but also new requirements (fast delivery, reliability, improved accessibility). The subject of traffic is organized into two separate but complementary volumes: Volume 3 on Traffic Management and Volume 4 on Traffic Safety. Traffic Safety, Volume 4 of the Research for Innovative Transports Set, presents a collection of updated papers from the TRA 2014 Conference, highlighting the diversity of research in this field. Theoretical chapters and practical case studies address topics such as road safety management and policies, accident analysis and modeling, vulnerable road users' safety, road infrastructure safety, ITS and railway safety.

This report takes stock of recent developments and initiatives to meet increasingly ambitious road safety targets, and constitutes a major international review of progress in developing Safe System approaches, now adopted in a small number of countries.

"The Global status report on road safety 2015, reflecting information from 180 countries, indicates that worldwide the total number of road traffic deaths has plateaued at 1.25 million per year, with the highest road traffic fatality rates in low-income countries. In the last three years, 17 countries have aligned at least one of their laws with best practice on seat-belts, drink-driving, speed, motorcycle helmets or child restraints. While there has been progress towards improving road safety legislation and in making vehicles safer, the report shows that the pace of change is too slow. Urgent action is needed to achieve the ambitious target for road safety reflected in the newly adopted 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: halving the global number of deaths and injuries from road traffic crashes by 2020. Made possible through funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, this report is the third in the series, and provides a snapshot of the road safety situation globally, highlighting the gaps and the measures needed to best drive progress."--Publisher's description.

Road safety is an important sustainable development goal, yet relatively underappreciated and greatly underfunded. Every year, more than 1.2 million people are killed globally while another 50 million are injured as a consequence of road traffic accidents. Approximately 90% of all road accidents now happen in low- and middle-income countries.Recognizing the need to support member States in urgently and effectively addressing road safety challenges, three of the United Nations regional commissions initiated the project: "Strengthening the national road safety management capacities of selected developing countries and countries with economies in transition". The project aimed to assist four countries to enhance their national road safety management capacities and to effectively address and improve their national road safety records. The project was implemented in Albania, Dominican Republic, Georgia and Viet Nam. The Road Safety Performance Reviews assessed the current road safety situation, helped the Governments concerned to identify the most critical road safety issues and recommended actions to be taken. Based on the identified priority needs, capacity-building seminars and workshops for national road safety stakeholders were organized. Additionally, the project raised public awareness on road safety issues and sensitized national experts, as well as the public and non-governmental sectors to the need to set ambitious road safety targets and implement specific measures to improve road safety.

Every day, it is estimated that about 350 people are killed on the roads of OECD countries, and thousands of others are injured. New technologies, including intelligent speed adaptation and collision avoidance systems, are being developed which could significantly improve road safety levels and reduce these casualties. However, significant investment is also going into technological research which may have a negative impact on road safety, unless action is taken to ensure their compatibility with current road systems. This OECD report evaluates the global impact of new technologies on road safety and provides recommendations to governments and industry to ensure that fatalities and injuries in road traffic are reduced.