The adoption of Road Safety Vision 2010 by the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators (CCMTA) and the official endorsement of its stated targets by all Ministers of Transportation and Highway Safety in the fall of 2000 provided Canada’s road safety stakeholders with targets against which to develop new strategies and measure intervention efforts. Previous Road Safety Vision annual reports introduced the program, described Canada’s action plan and reviewed successful road safety initiatives implemented in Canada and internationally. This report outlines the benchmark data for the national target as well as each of the sub-targets. Road Safety Vision 2010 is Canada’s national road safety plan. It is the successor to our first national road safety initiative, Road Safety Vision 2001, which was officially launched in 1996. The goal of Road Safety Vision 2010 is to make our roads the safest in the world. The good news in 2002 is that safety on our roads is improving. Since 1984, fatalities resulting from traffic collisions have decreased by 33% and serious injuries have declined by 35%. These positive changes have come about despite substantial increases in the population (26%), in the number of licensed drivers (34%) and in the number of motor vehicles registered (26%). The death toll for 2001 (the most recent year for which numbers are available) was the lowest in almost 50 years. However, in spite of these dramatic improvements, deaths and injuries resulting from traffic collisions continue to be the major transportation safety problem in Canada. In 2001, 2,778 road users were killed in traffic collisions and almost 17,000 suffered serious injuries (defined as requiring hospitalisation for 24 hours or more). Collectively, almost 224,000 road users, or more than 600 per day, became casualties who suffered some form of physical injury. Traffic collisions cause more than 90% of all transportation related fatalities. Among young road users (aged 15-24 years), traffic collisions account for more than twice the number of fatalities compared to the three other leading causes of death combined (tumours, diseases of the circulatory system and respiratory diseases). The societal costs of traffic collisions are enormous. Estimates of economic losses alone range from $10 billion to $25 billion, depending on the calculation method used. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting