Publications
1-5 of 5
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Post-Crash Health Care
Beyond the Numbers: Estimating the Disability Burden of Road Traffic Injuries
November 2023
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Road Infrastructure
Practical Guide for Road Safety Auditors and Inspectors in Ukraine (Ukrainian)
July 2022
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Utilize GRSF recommended methodology to gain a thorough understanding of road safety management capacity;
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Assess institutional management arrangements as an important focus of the analysis of the road safety system in Samoa;
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Consider the existing national road safety strategy—Samoa National Action Plan (SNAP) for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020—and propose updates for the next period;
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Provide capacity building on crash investigation and evidence-based road safety measures to ensure success and sustainability, with a focus on vulnerable road users such as females, children, and persons with disabilities; and,
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Focus on crash data management, including providing hands on capacity building and crash analysis.
This GRSF-funded study explores the medical, economic, and social costs of road traffic accidents (RTAs), particularly focusing on individuals with permanent disabilities. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), RTAs are a global public health crisis, ranked as the 12th leading cause of death and the primary cause of mortality among children and young adults. While the UN's Decade of Action for Road Safety (2021–2030) aims to reduce RTA deaths, the study argues that more focus is needed on injuries and the long-term impact on those left disabled by RTAs.
Building on GRSF’s report Beyond The Numbers: Estimating the Disability Burden of Road Traffic Injuries (Mitra et al., 2023), this project examines data from Namibia and South Africa and interviews with experts to highlight the often-overlooked challenges faced by RTA-related disability survivors. These individuals encounter unique issues—such as brain injuries, psychological trauma, and sudden financial burdens—that require specific support mechanisms beyond general disability frameworks.
Economic losses from RTAs are substantial, with WHO estimating global costs up to $1.8 trillion annually. However, existing research focuses mainly on medical costs and productivity losses, neglecting broader social impacts. Data on the prevalence of permanent disabilities varies, underscoring the need for standardized research.
The study calls for integrating disability concerns into road safety policies, emphasizing that improved enforcement in low- and middle-income countries could prevent disabilities and reduce societal costs. Ultimately, it advocates for recognizing RTA-related disabilities as a critical issue within global health, disability policy, and development agendas.
It is well-documented that road crashes claim around 1.35 million lives each year and rank as the eighth leading cause of death globally, causing huge burdens for economies, health systems, and transport networks. However, beneath the sobering fatality statistics lies a largely unexplored landscape: the staggering toll of disabilities induced by road crashes. Until now, the focus of road safety research and policy discourse has predominantly revolved around fatalities, which has limited our understanding of traffic-related injuries and disability burdens at the individual, community, and national level.
To address this critical knowledge gap, this pioneering study—involving over 2,300 patients hospitalized for road crash injuries—provides valuable insights into the prevalence, causes, and long-term impacts of crash-related disabilities. By broadening the discussion beyond fatalities to the often-overlooked issue of disability, the report paves the way for a more holistic perspective on road safety impacts, which can inform more effective road safety policies.
This report is a call to action for comprehensive and context-specific interventions that encompass both the transport and health sectors. Effective measures may include implementing safety regulations, enhancing emergency services, strengthening rehabilitative care, and expanding social safety nets to ease the financial burden on crash survivors. Collaborative efforts between governments, global and regional organizations, civil society, and other stakeholders will be indispensable.
After almost two decades of experience with Road Safety Audit (RSA) Worldwide, this procedure is now recognized as one of the most efficient engineering tools. RSA is a highly efficient and cost-effective engineering tool for improvement of safety on roads. It is much cheaper to identify road safety deficiencies in the process of design than later after construction is completed. RSAs are among the most cost-effective investments a Road Authority can undertake.
With its EU Directive No. 2008/96 and amendment 2019/1936 on road infrastructure safety management, the European Union (EU) made a clear decision that RSA will be mandatory for the Trans-European Road Network (TERN) and main roads. This Directive contains another tool called Road Safety Inspection (RSI) on safety deficiencies of existing roads. The RSI is very similar to the process of Road Safety Audit in the pre-opening phase of newly constructed roads. RSIs are essential for the redesign and upgrading of existing roads, and these are done in many countries to give the designers insights and direction for safety improvements. Given that, the purpose of this practical guide is to provide practical guidance to those doing RSAs and RSIs, the examples of typical design deficiencies shown should be useful to both road safety inspectors and road safety auditors.
This document draws on the more comprehensive guidelines and manuals on Safety engineering mentioned in the acknowledgements but deliberately focuses only on these issues of direct relevance to road safety auditors/inspectors and to the road safety reports that they must prepare, including of recommendations for improvements.
This is a special edition of the guide, adapted for Ukraine road safety conditions and legislation, funded by the World Bank‘s Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) under the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS).
Після майже двох десятиліть досвіду проведення аудиту безпеки дорожнього руху (RSA) у всьому світі ця процедура визнана одним із найефективніших інженерних інструментів. RSA є високоефективним і економічно вигідним інженерним інструментом для підвищення безпеки на дорогах. Набагато дешевше виявити недоліки безпеки дорожнього руху в процесі проектування, ніж пізніше після завершення будівництва. RSA є одними з найбільш рентабельних інвестицій, які може здійснити дорожнє управління.
У своїй Директиві ЄС № 2008/96 і поправці 2019/1936 щодо управління безпекою дорожньої інфраструктури Європейський Союз (ЄС) прийняв чітке рішення про те, що RSA буде обов’язковим для Транс’європейської мережі доріг (TERN) і магістральних доріг. Ця Директива містить інший інструмент під назвою «Інспекція безпеки дорожнього руху» (RSI) щодо недоліків безпеки існуючих доріг. RSI дуже схожий на процес аудиту безпеки дорожнього руху на етапі перед відкриттям новозбудованих доріг. RSI мають важливе значення для редизайну та модернізації існуючих доріг, і вони проводяться в багатьох країнах, щоб дати проектувальникам зрозуміти та вказати напрямки для покращення безпеки. Враховуючи те, що метою цього практичного посібника є надання практичних вказівок тим, хто проводить RSA та RSI, наведені приклади типових недоліків конструкції мають бути корисними як інспекторам безпеки дорожнього руху, так і аудиторам безпеки дорожнього руху.
Цей документ спирається на більш вичерпні рекомендації та посібники з техніки безпеки, згадані у подяках, але навмисно зосереджується лише на тих питаннях, які мають безпосереднє відношення до аудиторів/інспекторів з безпеки дорожнього руху та до звітів з безпеки дорожнього руху, які вони повинні підготувати, включаючи рекомендації щодо покращення.
Це спеціальне видання посібника, адаптованого до умов безпеки дорожнього руху та законодавства в Україні, фінансованого Глобальним фондом безпеки дорожнього руху (GRSF) Світового банку в рамках Ініціативи Bloomberg Philanthropies for Global Road Safety (BIGRS).
The Road Safety Management Capacity Assessment (RSMCA) is an activity within a broader Advisory Services and Analytics (ASA), which aims to gain a holistic and thorough understanding of the road safety management capacity of three selected Pacific Island Countries (PICs)—Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu—in order to support their respective governments to develop national strategies and plans of action to improve road safety outcomes, with a focus on crash data management. The ASA will also support a pilot of the World Bank’s Data for Road Incident Visualization, Evaluation, and Reporting (DRIVER) road crash database in Samoa and provide hands on capacity building in crash analysis.
The ASA is being funded by a Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) grant from the United Kingdom Agency for International Development (UK AID). The GRSF grant will help the Government of Samoa (GoS) to have a clear image of their road safety situation, risks and challenges, and further on to establish the basis for a national crash database. To ensure sustainability through capacity building and awareness-raising activities, knowledge will be shared with local stakeholders.
The key objectives of this ASA are as follows:
An auxiliary objective is to build capacity to use crash data to identify problems and implement road safety evidence-based measures in Samoa. Furthermore, given the negative impacts of severe weather events on road safety, which will be further exacerbated by climate change, the ASA will help to address the way that road safety is managed in the face of climate change, by training police officers to gain better skills in crash investigation.
The results from the DRIVER pilot in Samoa will be shared with counterparts in selected other PICs, with the aim of scaling up the system across the region. Only with accurate data can road safety be effectively managed and improved, and results measured. In support of this, as of October 2019, the World Bank’s Environmental and Social Framework (World Bank 2019) calls for road safety to be considered on all World Bank-funded projects.
The World Bank is also currently providing assistance to the road sector in Samoa through several projects, including the Samoa Climate Resilient Transport Project (SCRTP), which commenced in 2018. SCRTP will support the GoS to improve the climate resilience of the road network and provide key assistance required to contribute towards effectively managing climate resilient and safe road sector assets. One of the sub-components of SCRTP is dedicated to establishing and operationalizing a database for recording and analyzing road crash data.
The database will combine the existing siloed data, housed in different government agencies, into a single readily accessible platform under the Ministry of Work, Transport and Infrastructure (MWTI). The system will make use of DRIVER, to be piloted through this road safety ASA. SCRTP has other sub-components and activities focused on road safety, such as Road Safety Audits for project roads, a driver licensing training pilot focusing on women, and a road safety engineering technical assistance activity. This GRSF ASA will provide crucial data and insight for the successful delivery of the road safety program under SCRTP, plus other ongoing World Bank-financed projects.