Road accidents are a leading cause of death and injury worldwide, about 1.2 million people die in road accidents every year. Almost 85 percent of road deaths occur in Low-Income Countries (LIC). Apart from humanitarian aspects of road safety, road accidents have serious social and economic implications. The total direct and indirect cost of road accidents is estimated at about US$ 880 billion or 2 per cent of the worlds GDP in the year 2005. The main reasons for the poor road safety records in developing countries are: (1) lack of awareness of the road safety problem in the public, the political and the professional arenas; (2) lack of institutional capacity and of adequately trained and motivated staff; and (3) insufficient funding of road safety measures. It is necessary to solve all three problems. In LIC the funding problem seems to be the most difficult one to overcome and needs to be tackled first in combination with road safety awareness campaigns. Without a stable and sufficient flow of funds for road safety, any attempt to solve institutional problems is bound to fail. Since road users are the ones that cause most of the road accidents and bear the consequences, they are the ones that benefit most by paying for road safety improvements. Hence applying the user-pays-principle is sensible in order to overcome the funding challenge. Whereas road safety engineering measures, including Black Spot Improvements, can be financed through road construction and maintenance funds, road safety programmes are best financed by applying a road safety surcharge of about 1 US-Cent per litre of motor fuel, ROAD SAFETY CENT, or 5 to 10 percentage of vehicle insurance premiums, complimented by public and private sector contributions. LIC with very high accident rates might need two to three times as much. Although vehicle insurance premiums best reflect road accident risks, surcharges on motor fuel seem to produce better results since they are less subject to evasion in LIC. (A). For the covering abstract of the conference see E216632.
Samenvatting