Road traffic injuries are a major public health problem and a leading cause of death and injury. Each year nearly 1.2 million people die and millions more are injured or disabled in road crashes, mostly in low-income and middle-income countries. This imposes an enormous social cost - some 1%-2%of GDP. As motorization increases, road traffic crashes are a fast-growing problem, particularly in developing countries and the situation is getting worse.
Solutions
The World Report on Traffic Injury Prevention identifies improvements in road safety management that have dramatically decreased road traffic deaths and injuries in industrialized countries that have been active in road safety.
A Systems Approach
We advocate an approach which ensures that a road system is designed to accommodate and compensate for human vulnerability and frailty. This requires an understanding of the system as a whole and the interaction between its elements, and the identification of priorities and potential for action to address the five main risk factors:
- the non-use of safety belts and child restraints,
- the non-use of helmets,
- drinking and driving,
- inappropriate and excessive speed,
- the lack of safe roads
We also recommend that action is taken to manage key groups including vulnerable road users, those who drive for work and victims of road crashes.
Key documents:
- World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention. 2004. WHO
- Make Roads Safe Report - A New Priority for Sustainable DevelopmentCommission for Global Road Safety
- Global status report on road safety. 2009. WHO
- Safe System Infrastructure National Roundtable Report. 2009. ARRB
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