The safe road transport system approach

More than 1,24 million people die each year on the worlds roads and between 20 to 50 million suffer from nonfatal injuries. The UN Road Safety Collaboration Meetings under the leadership of WHO developed the Programme for the Decade of Actions for road safety taking nations into the responsibility of improving their accident figures by the five pillars of a national Road Safety Policy, safer Roads, safer Vehicles, safer Road Users and Post Crash Care. It is this Safe System Approach that takes into consideration the land use, infrastructure and transport planning, road user’s abilities and limitations and the close cooperation of all governmental and none governmental stakeholders involved.

Following the European Transport Safety Council's (ETSC) 8th Road Safety Performance Index Report on Ranking EU Progress on Road Safety; June 2014 Romania has made progress during the last 10 year but had still the highest fatality rate of 93 fatalities per 1 million inhabitants in Europe. [1]

The contribution will present the main activities of the fife pillars with a focus on PIARC's Road Infrastructure Management tools to improve safety and function of the road infrastructure based on the experiences with the land use problems in Asian, African and European countries.

A GPS based accident data system will help researchers and practitioners to improve their countries road safety.

The report will show the important steps for safer roads which had been developed in Romania and how actions of short and long term measures on all five pillars have reduced the number of traffic victims remarkable in Eastern Germany after reunification and in addition how the hierarchy of motorways, 2+1 express roads, the rural roads and traffic calming in built up areas, have improved the economic development of cities and villages in a safe way.