One of the aims of international cooperation in the field of road safety is to make oneself familiar with performances and progress in other countries and to understand if and how these can be of guidance to policymaking, in an adapted form if appropriate. Comparisons can be a starting point to learn from each other. The learning includes subjects such as monitoring and explaining road safety developments, and gaining good insights in the impacts of interventions as a basis for speeding up road safety improvements in one's country or jurisdiction. Benchmarking is a process in which countries or sub-national jurisdictions evaluate various aspects of their performance in relation to that of other counties or jurisdictions, including the so-called 'best-in-class'. The benchmark results provide countries or sub-national jurisdictions with information about others that can be used as a basis for developing measures and programmes to increase their own performance. Two important tasks can be identified in this process: 1. defining the key components of a road safety performance and investigating if and how these key components can be combined in a composite index; 2. finding a meaningful reference (best-in-class) and defining procedures for identifying such a meaningful reference. Comparing performances and, one step further, benchmarking performances seems to be an appropriate approach for road safety. This approach should help us to go beyond the rather traditional methods of comparing performances by only using mortality rates or fatality rates or risks. Ranking countries by using only these rates is a useful first step, but not very meaningful as a start to learn from each other. The SafetyNet project aims to build the framework of a European Road Safety Observatory, which will be the primary focus for road safety data and knowledge, as was specified in the Road Safety Action Programme 2003. In the SafetyNet project it was decided to develop a method of benchmarking road safety by using road safety indicators. To this end, the SUNflower approach was used, more precisely the information captured in the SUNflower pyramid and earlier attempts to elaborate on this in developing the SUNflower footprint, as well as other SUNflower studies. We gave this project the name SUNflowerNext. Hence, the aim of the SUNflowerNext project is to develop a knowledge-based framework for comprehensive benchmarking of road safety performances and developments of a country or of sub-national jurisdictions. SUNflowerNext has made use of existing data that was relatively easily available. This ensured that the study could be carried out in a relatively short time. However, one important concession needed to be made. Because this study used an innovative approach with only existing data that was not always available, it was decided to set up the research in such a way that all the steps required for benchmarking a country's performance are taken, but to refrain from presenting the actual results of the benchmark as they are of insufficient quality. The experiences gained from this study are such that SUNflowerNext's ambition — benchmarking the safety performance of countries - is realistic once reliable data is available. Therefore, it is recommended to carry out this benchmarking in Europe in the near future, to widely disseminate the results, and to consequently use them for policy making in the European Member States. This, and other SUNflower reports may be accessed by Internet users at http://sunflower.swov.nl
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