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

  • UK road safety improves for 2024
    March 27, 2025
    Preliminary data shows UK road safety improved for 2024.
  • Venezuela has a high road fatality rate
    February 26, 2014
    New research identifies Venezuela as having the most dangerous roads in Latin America. This comes from a study by the University of Michigan (UM), which shows Venezuela to have the highest risk of car crash fatalities for a Latin American country, according to a report by Business News Americas. The study showed that Venezuela has 35 road deaths/100,000 population. The Dominican Republic has 32 road deaths/100,000 population, El Salvador has 29/100,000, Brazil has 22/100,000, Paraguay has 20/100,000, Ecuado
  • Spanish road safety hits plateau
    January 7, 2016
    Strong measures in Spain have helped reduce the country’s road fatality rate enormously in recent years. Tougher enforcement of road rules commenced in 2004, with a notable drop in speeding and drink driving, resulting in a reduce rate of crashes. However a recent report from the Spanish motoring body RACC reveals that the figures have hit a plateau, with road fatalities for 2015 similar to those in 2014. This is the third consecutive year that Spain’s road fatality rates have remained broadly unchanged. Th
  • Road safety collaboration
    July 9, 2025
    A road safety collaboration will cut road crash casualties in Asia.