Abstract
Although road traffic fatalities in the high-income countries have fallen markedly in recent decades, non-fatality crashes have not. Further reduction in crash severity and frequency will be hampered by probable changes to the car-driving population, car weight, and share of non-motorised travel. Distraction from the driving task could also increase in parallel with in-vehicle telematics use. Use of the new information technology is increasingly seen as a solution to the road safety problem. It is argued here that although the new technology has a key role to play in improving road transport generally, and could be very useful in crash protection, it will be of less help in reducing collision frequency. (Author/publisher)