Skip to main content

Improving road safety worldwide

The UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) says that road safety requires a major transformation to halve road fatalities by 2020. Data shows that road injuries present a significant public health concern worldwide. Road crashes are one of the top 10 causes of death globally. But despite roads in the EU becoming safer each year, the reduction of road fatalities since 2010 has reached a plateau. In 2018, there were 25,100 reported road fatalities across the 28 EU member states. The average road fatality
June 27, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
The UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) says that road safety requires a major transformation to halve road fatalities by 2020. Data shows that road injuries present a significant public health concern worldwide. Road crashes are one of the top 10 causes of death globally. But despite roads in the EU becoming safer each year, the reduction of road fatalities since 2010 has reached a plateau.

In 2018, there were 25,100 reported road fatalities across the 28 EU member states. The average road fatality rate in 2018 was 49/1 million inhabitants, which constitutes a 1% decrease from 2017.

It is apparent that there is a lot of work to do if the EU is to reach its target of reducing road fatalities and serious injury by 50% before 2020, according to TRL.

A number of key factors in boosting safety have been identified by TRL, which provides leading research into road safety and is committed to developing safe transport systems for the future.

According to TRL, it is important to look at road safety as a major public health issue. And with traffic volumes increasing year-on-year, driver behaviours such as speeding and mobile phone use are key contributors to road injury. In addition, TRL says that it is vital for the transport sector to innovate new technologies that enable safer transport and shift gears in approaches to enforcement and education.

Related Content

  • Driving safely to cut risks for road users
    August 24, 2015
    Regulations in France covering driving have become tougher. In a bid to tackle distracted driving, French drivers are now banned from using hands-free phone kits that use headsets while at the wheel. This follows research showing that the use of hands-free kits is only slightly less dangerous than holding a phone in the hand while at the wheel. French drivers are also forbidden to eat, apply make-up, read a map or listen to very loud music when behind the wheel. Meanwhile headphones or wireless earpieces ar
  • Worrying crash statistics
    April 24, 2012
    Official statistics available for the UK collated by the police show that during the 12 years to 2011, there were over 3,000,000 road casualties in Great Britain. During this 12 year period over 36,000 people died while a further 373,985 were seriously injured.
  • Road safety education in the spotlight
    January 25, 2019
    Road safety education is severely lacking in much of Europe. That is the finding of research by the European Transport Safety Commission (ETSC). According to this new report, there are vast differences in the amount of road safety education given to children across Europe, particularly at secondary school level. The research shows that road safety education is provided to children in primary education all over Europe. However, it is not given to youngsters in secondary education in 20% of the 36 European s
  • US road safety concern for 2017
    February 23, 2018
    The US is making only slow progress with regard to road safety. During 2017 there were 40,100 road deaths, according to the National Safety Council. This is the second year that deaths from motor vehicle crashes have topped 40,000. There has been a slight improvement for 2017 from 2016 with road deaths dropping 1%. However 2016 was a poor year for road safety, with a 6% gain in road deaths over 2015. This means that the figures for 2017 represent a 6% increase in road deaths from two years before in 2015.