Road traffic safety

Road traffic safety refers to the methods and measures used to prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured. Typical road users include: pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, vehicle passengers, horse-riders and passengers of on-road public transport (mainly buses and trams).The basic strategy of a Safe System approach is to ensure that in the event of a crash, the impact energies remain below the threshold likely to produce either death or serious injury. This threshold will vary from crash scenario to crash scenario, depending upon the level of protection offered to the road users involved. For example, the chances of survival for an unprotected pedestrian hit by a vehicle diminish rapidly at speeds greater than 30 km/h, whereas for a properly restrained motor vehicle occupant the critical impact speed is 50 km/h (for side impact crashes) and 70 km/h (for head-on crashes).Traffic accident data are often compared between countries and between regions. These comparisons are done in numbers of casualties, but also in relation to the number of inhabitants (a measure of national health risk), the number of vehicle kilometres driven (a measure of the transport risk) as well as the number of cars in a country, etc. For a reliable comparison the real volumes should be used (rather than recorded numbers with different recording rates)Between 2007 and 2009, VMT decreased by 2% while fatalities decreased by 20% Since 2009 (to 2015), VMT increased by 4%, while fatalities increased by 3%, Since 1966, fatalities have decreased in the same time that traveled distance increased. Road traffic safety refers to the methods and measures used to prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured. Typical road users include: pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, vehicle passengers, horse-riders and passengers of on-road public transport (mainly buses and trams).