Safe roads - A dream or a reality? - International Transport Conference Dubai 15-18 January 1996 - Paper

Sep 18, 2026

Uploaded by Jacob

Safe roads: A dream or a reality? is a conference paper reviewing road safety problems in developing and emerging countries. It summarizes estimates of yearly road deaths and injuries, explains why low- and middle-income regions face worsening trends, and contrasts them with gradual improvements in high-income countries. The paper discusses rates and trends using deaths per licensed vehicles, highlights under-reporting in many countries, and analyzes the economic and humanitarian cost of road accidents.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

1. INTRODUCTION

2.1 Rates and trends

2.2 The cost of road accidents

3. THE NATURE OF THE ROAD ACCIDENT PROBLEM

3.1 Accident Patterns

TITLE Safe roads:A dream or a reality? by JWootton and GD Jacobs Overseas Centre Transport Research LaboratoryCrowthorne Berkshire United Kingdom wOOTTON,J and GD JACOBS (1995).Safe roads:A dream or a reality?InternationalTransport Conference,Dubai,15-18 January 1996. PA 3184/96 SAFE ROADS:A DREAM OR A REALITY? by J Wootton and G D Jacobs Transport Research Laboratory,UK # 1.INTRODUCTION Independent studies by both the Transport Research Laboratory(TRL)and the World Bankhave estimated that about 500,000 people lose their lives each year as a result of roadaccidents and over 15 million suffer injuries.The majority of these,about 70 per cent,occurin those countries which the World Bank classifies as low or middle income.Whereas theroad accident situation is slowly improving in the high income countries,most developingcountries face a worsening situation.As infectious diseases are brought increasingly undercontrol,road deaths and injury rise in relative importance.In Thailand for example,moreyears of potential life are lost through road accidents than from tuberculosis and malariacombined (Yerrell,1992).The author believes that whilst there can be no such phenomenonas a completely'safe'road system(due in no small part to human behaviour),very high roadaccident death rates are not the inevitable price that has to be paid by these countries for themobility of people and goods,but that there is much scope for improving their road safetysituation whilst developing into a more industrialised society. This paper presents a broad review of the road safety problems in developing and emergingcountries as a thorough understanding of these must be gained before an effectiveimprovement strategy can be devised. ## 2.1 Rates and trends The rate used by TRL to compare the seriousness of the road accident problem in differentcountries throughout the world is the number of deaths from road accidents per annum per 10,000 vehicles licensed.This is far from ideal as an indicator of relative safety in differentcountries.For example,the injury accidents per million vehicle-km travelled per annum maybe a much better parameter to use but,unfortunately,the reporting of non-fatal accidents inmost Third World countries is poor and few carry out traffic surveys and censuses whichprovide information on annual travel by different classes of vehicle. Results for a number of countries(1990-93)are shown in Figure 1.It can be seen thatwhilst countries of Western Europe and North America are characterised by a death rate(asdefined above)of often less than 2,some developing countries have a death rate in excessof 150.In most developing countries there will be an under-reporting of road accident deathsand an over-estimate of licensed vehicles because as vehicles are scrapped they tend not tobe removed from the vehicle register. Fig.1Road Accident Fatality Rates (deaths/10,000 registered vehicles)inselected countries(from latest data available from 1990-1993) In 1984,TRL carried out a study in Colombo,Sri Lanka,comparing 'official'road accidentstatistics from police records with those held by hospitals.It was found that less than 25 percent of the hospital records(of fatal and serious road accidents)were identified in the policedata.Matching of accidents involving children was particularly low.Studies such as thesesuggest that the road safety problem in developing countries may be much worse than officialstatistics suggest. Figure 2 shows the percentage increase or decrease in the actual number of road accidentfatalities over the period 1968 to 1990 for four groups of countries.It can be seen that overthis given time period the number of road accident deaths in 14 developed countries actuallyfell on average by 30 per cent.Conversely in 6 Asian and Middle Eastern countries and 12African countries(for which reasonably accurate statistics were available)there wereincreases of about 200 and 340 per cent respectively.In these countries,

FAQs

What scale of road deaths and injuries does the paper cite globally?

Independent studies cited in the introduction estimate about 500,000 deaths and over 15 million injuries each year from road accidents.

Why does the paper say official data may misrepresent the road safety problem in developing countries?

It notes poor reporting of non-fatal accidents and that many fatalities are missed when comparing police records with hospital records, indicating under-reporting and registration issues.

What economic argument does the paper make about road accidents?

The paper states that in both developed and developing countries, road accident costs can be equivalent to about 1% of annual gross national product, creating substantial resource loss.

Sep 18, 2026

Uploaded by Jacob