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

  • Work related crashes are a major factor in the EU
    June 20, 2017
    Work-related crashes account for up to 40% of road deaths in Europe. This is the finding of research by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC). The findings come as safety gains on Europe’s roads have hit a plateau. According to the ETSC, employers could be essential to tackling road risks and improving safety overall. The report by the ETSC says that employers, national governments and the European Union must boost efforts to tackle the problem of work-related road risk. In 2016, 25,671 lives were lo
  • Paul Verrico of Eversheds will be headline speaker at ERIC 2016
    August 9, 2016
    Despite Europe being a global leader in road safety, around 25,000 road users (working, walking, driving or riding a bicycle) did not make it home in 2015 and more than 200,000 others sustained life-changing or serious injuries. Leading Safety Lawyer Paul Verrico, a Partner of European law firm Eversheds will present the ERICLeeds16 ROAD SAFETY DEBATE. He will argue that organisations in the UK face ever increasing sanctions through new sentencing guidelines for health and safety and corporate manslaugh
  • Step up Action! IRF in New York for the launch of the UN Road Safety Fund
    June 15, 2018
    The Road Safety community gathered in New York on 12th-13th April for the launch of a new United Nations Road Safety Trust Fund. The new UN Fund is intended to catalyse road safety action across the globe, using donations to help unlock new government and municipal funding and refocus national road safety budgets towards proven ‘Safe System’ interventions. The FIA Foundation has pledged a donation of US$10 million to kick-start the fund launched by UN deputy secretary-general Amina Mohammed. The FIA Found
  • Addressing a silent disaster
    September 24, 2012
    As India's economy registers 9% annual growth, promising material super-power status by mid-century, the nation is barely beginning to address a silent disaster, that of road casualties It was Dr. P K Sikdar [a director of International Consultants and Technocrats/ICT and a former director of the Central Road Research Institute/CRRI] who coined the phrase "silent disaster."