A review of global road accident fatalities.

The problem of deaths and injury as a result of road accidents is now acknowledged to be a global phenomenon with authorities in virtually all countries of the world concerned about the growth in the number of people killed and seriously injured on their roads. This growing awareness is reflected in the recent establishment of the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) by the World Bank, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, bilateral aid agencies and other interested parties under the framework of the World Bank's Business Partners for Development (BPD) Programme. It was agreed that the World Bank, the Department for International Development UK (DFID) and TRL would co-fund a study which would be restricted to the analysis of published material. The study was carried out by TRL with the following objectives: (1) To derive an estimate of road accident fatalities world-wide and on a regional basis for the year 1999 and to derive forecasts of the likely number of deaths in the years 2010 and 2020; (2) To provide an estimate of accident costs world-wide (based on accident costs as a percentage of Gross National Product (GNP)); and (3) To obtain regional analyses of fatality trends, rates and risk (deaths per 10,000 vehicles and per 100,000 population respectively) and casualty trends by age, sex and road user type. The report for the GRSP identifies weaknesses in the quality of existing data, particularly from developing countries, and highlights the following areas that could be examined within the GRSP programme so that a greater understanding of the global road accident situation can be obtained. There should be better use of injury information from hospital data which could complement that obtained from police records. Greater priority should be given by the medical community, led by the WHO to monitoring road accident victims and include road accidents in national hospital surveillance systems. Accident databases in many developing countries should be improved through greater use of accident reporting and recording systems such as TRL's accident package MAAP.