Skip to main content

UN vehicle regulations ‘could prevent deaths and injuries in Brazil’

A new research report from the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) has revealed that 34,000 Brazilian lives could be saved and 350,000 serious injuries prevented by 2030, if UN vehicle safety regulations were adopted and car manufacturers sought to achieve higher ratings in the Latin NCAP crash test programme. Published on the eve of the second High Level Conference on Road Safety in Brazil, the independent study, which was commissioned by Global NCAP, highlights the gap between the regulated vehicl
November 17, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
A new research report from the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (491 TRL) has revealed that 34,000 Brazilian lives could be saved and 350,000 serious injuries prevented by 2030, if UN vehicle safety regulations were adopted and car manufacturers sought to achieve higher ratings in the Latin NCAP crash test programme.

Published on the eve of the second High Level Conference on Road Safety in Brazil, the independent study, which was commissioned by Global NCAP, highlights the gap between the regulated vehicle safety standards in the industrialised regions and Brazil. TRL’s findings closely align with the policy recommendations set out by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in their recent Global Status Report on Road Safety.

The new study concludes that Brazil “has started to introduce vehicle safety legislation and Latin NCAP is raising awareness about the importance of car safety and creating consumer based competition to motivate improvements”. However, “to help create an automotive market in Brazil that provides adequate levels of safety, further development of the minimum regulatory standards is required.”

Brazil has clearly made road safety a priority, and supporting much needed legislation will enable them to reach their road safety goals even faster. The report identifies clear regulatory priorities for Brazil including “the need to introduce a side impact crashworthiness test and to mandate for Electronic Stability Control (ESC) to be fitted to every new passenger car.”

The report also sets out a timetable for the adoption of these priorities which “are internationally proven to be cost effective countermeasures that save lives” and that there are clearly “established UN regulations available to apply now.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Do we need a new approach to ITS and traffic management?
    January 31, 2012
    In an article which has implications for the European Electronic Toll Service, ASECAP's Kallistratos Dionelis asks whether the approach we currently take to major ITS system implementations is always the best or healthiest. I was asked recently to write a paper on the technology-oriented future of transport. To paraphrase, I started with: "The goal of European policy-makers is to establish a transport system which meets society's economic, social and environmental needs, satisfying in parallel a rising dema
  • Automatic signal control to prevent emergency vehicle collisions?
    March 14, 2012
    Field trials under way in Arizona promise eradication of accidents between emergency vehicles at intersections – as part of a national focus on ‘intelligent signal’ infrastructure. Collisions between police cars, ambulances and fire crews as they reach intersections at the same time, with equal priority given by all signals set on red, are as serious as they sound absurd. For emergency teams and those in need of their help, the consequences are dire. The solution could come from application of connected veh
  • Road user charging comes a step closer in Oregon
    December 19, 2017
    Having been the first US state to introduce the gas tax a century ago, Oregon is now blazing the road user charging trail. Colin Sowman looks at progress to date. For more than a decade, authorities in Oregon have known of the impending decline in fuels tax income and while revenue increased by more than 5% in 2016, that growth will slow considerably this year and income is projected to start declining in 2020.
  • Progressing work zone safety systems
    February 1, 2012
    David Crawford investigates progress in a key safety area - work zones. Highway construction zone safety is taken seriously enough in the US to merit a special spring National Work Zone Awareness Week, which in 2010 ran from 19-23 April. Headed by the US Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), this aims to reduce an annual toll of work zone deaths - 720 in 2008 (an average of one every 10 hours) with more than 40,000 traffic injuries (an average of one every 13 minutes).