IRTAD Conference: Road safety needs better data

With the United Nations aiming to halve the 1.3 million yearly deaths around the world caused by road crashes, international road safety experts met at the IRTAD conference, Morocco, and have adopted Marrakech Declaration: better safety data for better outcomes. The experts from more than 40 countries concluded from the declaration that improving road safety data is essential to reducing road deaths and injuries.
October 18, 2017 Read time: 2 mins

With the United Nations aiming to halve the 1.3 million yearly deaths around the world caused by road crashes, international road safety experts met at the IRTAD conference, Morocco, and have adopted Marrakech Declaration: better safety data for better outcomes. 

The experts from more than 40 countries concluded from the declaration that improving road safety data is essential to reducing road deaths and injuries. They have made a series of recommendations aimed at policymakers and other leaders who are responsible for road safety.

These include identifying which data is needed for making decisions in road safety; addressing underreporting of road crashes and casualties; using more data on injury crashes (fatality data are insufficient to understand road safety problems fully). Furthermore, better knowledge of road safety also relies on better safety performance indicators, exposure data and context information; allowing a national agency analyse and publish road safety data collected at state and national levels. In addition, the recommendations also put forward monitoring risk factors and making results publicly available; harmonising road safety data based on common definitions, and finally, sharing road safety data among countries and co-operating within international initiates.

Fred Wegman, chair or the IRTAD Group, said Reliable data are essential to understand, assess and monitor the nature and magnitude of the road safety problem and the related solutions”.

He added, “Improvements made to the quality of road safety data will also improve the quality of data driven policy decisions.”

Classification & Data Collection Urban Traffic Control

Related Content

  • June 20, 2016
    Do buses need subsidies in congestion charging areas
    David Crawford takes a look at the debate surrounding bus subsidies. Subsidies for public transport are a well-known and frequently-used policy tool directed at reducing the high environmental and social costs of peak-period traffic congestion. But at the end of last year the Swedish Centre for Transport Studies published a working paper entitled ‘Should buses still be subsidised in Stockholm?’ This concluded that the subsidy levels currently being applied in Stockholm could be nearly halved by setting bus
    Read More
  • February 21, 2020
    Total and GRSF to improve Africa road safety data 
    Total Foundation has joined the Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) to help improve the road safety data and information systems in 43 African nations. 
    Read More
  • October 31, 2014
    Traffic accidents ‘number one worldwide cause of death among the young’
    A new study released by the Allianz Center for Technology (AZT) found that traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for youths, regardless of a country’s economic well-being. Thirty-one percent of all traffic-related deaths in the world are youth and young adults aged between 15 and 29 years. This translates to more than 400,000 lives lost per year, which exceeds youth deaths caused by diseases, drug use, suicide, violence or war-related events. Whether a traffic-related death of a youth occurs i
    Read More
  • January 11, 2017
    RAC survey shows big safety gains with average speed enforcement
    Cheaper and easier communications are providing authorities with new options for influencing driver behaviour. Colin Sowman reports. It’s official; Average speed cameras (ASCs) cut the number of fatal or serious injury crashes by more than a third.
    Read More

Highlighted Content