Skip to main content

ITF zero road deaths study wins International Road Safety Award

A new report, Zero Road Deaths and Serious Injuries: Leading a Paradigm Shift in Road Safety, setting out a new approach to road safety has won the 2017 Special Award of the prestigious Prince Michael of Kent International Road Safety Awards. The study by a group of 30 international road safety experts from 24 countries, led by the International Transport Forum at the OECD, reviews the experiences of countries that have made it their long-term objective to eliminate fatal road crashes. Originating i
December 14, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
A new report, Zero Road Deaths and Serious Injuries: Leading a Paradigm Shift in Road Safety, setting out a new approach to road safety has won the 2017 Special Award of the prestigious Prince Michael of Kent International Road Safety Awards.

The study by a group of 30 international road safety experts from 24 countries, led by the International Transport Forum at the OECD, reviews the experiences of countries that have made it their long-term objective to eliminate fatal road crashes.

Originating in Sweden, the report indicates that 88 European cities with a population above 100,000 have had no road fatalities over the course of a whole year. The biggest among them are Nottingham in the UK, Aachen, Germany and Espoo, Finland.

Sixteen European towns, nine in the United Kingdom, six in Germany and one in Norway, experienced no road deaths for five years running. In Sweden, not a single child died as result of a bicycle crash in Sweden in 2008.

According to the World Health Organisation, 1.25 million people are killed by traffic every year.  Road crashes are the leading cause of death worldwide for young people aged 15 to 29. Traffic is the ninth leading cause of death overall, killing more people than malaria, while 90 per cent of road deaths occur in low-income countries, where rapid motorisation drives up fatalities. In many developed countries, the progress made over the past decades has stalled.

The ITF says new thinking is required if the target set by the international community of halving road deaths by 2020 is to be met

The report offers guidance for leaders that want to drastically reduce the road deaths in their communities and sets out how a ‘safe system’ approach to road safety can underpin this goal.

Related Content

  • August 23, 2024
    Pedestrians still walking a tightrope in US
    Although the Governors Highway Safety Association says annual US pedestrian traffic deaths fell for first time since Covid, they remain above pre-pandemic levels, finds David Arminas
  • June 16, 2020
    Speed limits: is 20 really plenty?
    Speed kills – which means cutting speed should cut collisions. But is it that simple?
  • May 29, 2015
    Big data and self-driving cars: New studies from ITF
    Two new reports launched by the International Transport Forum (ITF) during the Annual Summit of Transport Ministers in Leipzig, Germany, highlight issues for the transport sector: the use of big data and the trend towards automated cars. The ITF claims that failing to ensure strong privacy protection in the collection and processing of location data may result in a regulatory backlash against the technology, which could hamper innovation and limit the social and economic benefits the use of such data delive
  • July 12, 2012
    Deaths up and road safety spending down in England
    Fifty local councils in England saw more than a ten per cent increase in killed and seriously injured (KSI) crash rates between 2010 and 2011, according to an Institute for Advanced Motorists (IAM) analysis of the new road accident figures. The biggest increases in KSI numbers were in St Helens – 62 per cent, Portsmouth – 57 per cent, Stoke on Trent – 57 per cent, and Coventry – 51 per cent. A further 76 councils saw increases in the KSI rate above the national average of two per cent.