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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:

• Utilize GRSF recommended methodology to gain a thorough understanding of road safety management capacity;

• Assess institutional management arrangements as an important focus of the analysis of the road safety system in Samoa;

• 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;

• 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,

• Focus on crash data management, including providing hands on capacity building and crash analysis.

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.

The report introduces how the Safe System Approach works, with a focus on road infrastructure and road safety engineering best practices from one of the best performing countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Singapore.

Singapore roads are not only considered the safest in the region, they rank among the safest globally. Road safety management rules and regulations implemented in the country have resulted in significant strides in managing the effects of collision factors related to roadway design, human behavior, and vehicle attributes. As a result, road safety statistics have shown that fatalities on the Singapore road network have been steadily declining over the past decade. This is leading to a desire on the part of neighboring countries to follow Singapore's example and learn from its experience.

In order to mitigate collisions attributed to vehicle inadequacies or defects, one of the measures taken in Singapore was to enforce a strict vehicle import policy. Vehicle imports are permissible from countries that have adopted and comply with recognized high vehicle safety standards. Vehicle safety compliance is particularly focused on 52 items specified by the Land Transport Authority (LTA). In addition to strict vehicle import standards, Singapore enforces a strict vehicle quota system, which regulates the number of vehicles on the road network. Additionally, vehicles are required to undergo frequent inspections. Cars between 3 and 10 years old are required to have a biennial inspection, and cars older than 10 years are required to undergo annual inspections.

Furthermore, taxis are required to undergo inspections every six months. Road safety education and driver education are core tenants of Singapore's roads safety strategy. Road safety education is predominately undertaken by the Singapore Traffic Police, but nongovernmental organizations such as the National Security Coordination Secretariat contribute significantly to road safety education in Singapore.

Document also available in : Thai, Bahasa (Indonesian), Bahasa (Indonesian), Vietnamese

If you are reading this, you probably already know that 1.3 million people are killed on the world’s roads each year and another 20-50 million are seriously injured – 90 percent of these tragedies occur in developing countries. Having such figures help us understand the gravity of the epidemic we are facing; however, when we look at most low- and middle-income countries’ road crash data, the official numbers often do not match up with the reality of their roads.

Many road crashes go un-reported, certain incidents – such as those involving cyclists or property damage-only – are under-reported, and in a vast number of records, the data are incomplete (lacking even the location of the crash). Being able to efficiently and accurately collect, analyze, and report road crash data, is the first step to tackle this problem, and this is where DRIVER comes into play.

Developed by the World Bank in 2013, the Data for Road Incident Visualization, Evaluation, and Reporting (DRIVER) system, is a free web-based, open-source platform that improves the collection, management, analysis, and reporting of road crash data by enabling multiple agencies such as the police, health care providers, and local/national government agencies, to geo-reference road incidents in the same database in real time. It was first piloted in two Philippine cities, Cebu and Manila and since then, the GRSF has supported the improvement and deployment of DRIVER through workshops, pilot projects, implementation support and scaleup in countries such as Brazil, Bangladesh, India, Kazakhstan, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia.

Key Findings ⌵︎

• Cutting traffic deaths and injuries by half could add 7 to 22% to GDP per capita over 24 years in select countries

• Welfare benefits equivalent to 6 to 32% of GDP per capita could be realized over the same period if traffic deaths and injuries were halved

• Road traffic injuries are the single largest cause of mortality and long-term disability among people aged 15-29, prime working age

Each year, 1.25 million people lose their lives on the world’s roads and another 20 to 50 million are seriously injured. The tragic loss from a road traffic death or serious injury is compounded by the harm to households and social networks. A disproportionate 90% of road traffic injuries (RTIs) occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), representing a major public health and economic burden. This is an eminently preventable problem that is critical to the development agenda. Unfortunately, due to lack of solid data, the impact of road injuries on economic growth and social welfare has been difficult to assess.

A new World Bank report funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, The High Toll of Traffic Injuries: Unacceptable and Preventable, looks to fill the gap. It proposes a comprehensive methodology to quantify both the income growth and social welfare benefits that safer roads could bring to developing countries. The analysis is based on data collected from 135 countries over 24 years, and focuses on China, India, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Thailand—five geographically, demographically and economically diverse LMICs.

The study shows that reducing the number of RTIs in developing countries not only increases income growth, but also generates substantial welfare benefits to societies.

Key findings from the report include:

• Reducing the number of RTIs leads to long-term national income growth. This correlation is easy to establish as RTIs are the single largest cause of mortality and long-term disability among young people aged 15-29 (prime working age).

• Significant long-term income growth—7 to 22% increase in GDP per capita over 24 years—can be achieved by halving road traffic deaths and injuries, in line with the current UN targets.

• The study goes beyond productivity or economic gains, and highlights the broader welfare benefits associated with reducing road traffic mortality and morbidity, adding years of life free of injuries and lasting disabilities. This recognizes that GDP is an imperfect measure of social welfare, as it does not factor health benefits. The study finds welfare benefits equivalent to 6 to 32% of the national GDP can be realized from reducing road deaths and injuries by 50% over 24 years.

• By maximizing healthy years of life, free of injuries and disabilities, actions to reduce road traffic injuries can help countries increase productivity, enhance the well-being of their populations, and build human capital—a key developmental priority for the World Bank.

• Road safety goes beyond the transport sector, with a direct impact on public health, societies, and economies. Likewise, because road safety is an inherently cross-sectoral issue, real progress can only happen if all relevant stakeholders unite their efforts.

> Press Release: Road Deaths and Injuries Hold Back Economic Growth in Developing Countries

The Road Safety Management Capacity Reviews and Safe System Projects Guidelines have been designed to assist country road safety professionals, World Bank and regional development bank staff, international consultants, community groups, private sector organizations, and all other global, regional and country partners and stakeholders to conduct capacity reviews and prepare follow-up road safety projects in a variety of low and middle-income countries and investment settings.

The purpose of the Guidelines is to:

• Specify a management and investment framework to overcome institutional capacity barriers and support the successful implementation of road safety interventions;

• Provide practical procedures designed for application at a country level to accelerate knowledge transfer and sustainably scale up investment to improve road safety results;

• Ensure that institutional strengthening initiatives are properly sequenced and adjusted to the absorptive and learning capacity of the country concerned.

The Guidelines emphasize managing for results and the associated strengthening of country road safety management systems, with special attention being paid to the role of the lead road safety agency in ensuring institutional effectiveness and efficiency in program delivery. They highlight the importance of addressing all elements of the road safety management system, taking a staged approach to country road safety investment, and targeting the highest concentrations of deaths and injuries across the road network.

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This report is also available in:

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