Every year the lives of approximately 1.3 million people are cut short as a result of a road traffic crash. Between 20 and 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries, with many incurring a disability as a result of their injury.
Road traffic injuries cause considerable economic losses to individuals, their families, and to nations as a whole. These losses arise from the cost of treatment as well as lost productivity for those killed or disabled by their injuries, and for family members who need to take time off work or school to care for the injured. Road traffic crashes cost most countries 3% of their gross domestic product.
More than 90% of road traffic deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Road traffic injury death rates are highest in the African region and lowest in the European region. Even within high-income countries, people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be involved in road traffic crashes.
From a young age, males are more likely to be involved in road traffic crashes than females. About three quarters (73%) of all road traffic deaths occur among young males under the age of 25 years who are almost 3 times as likely to be killed in a road traffic crash as young females.
Delays in detecting and providing care for those involved in a road traffic crash increase the severity of injuries. Care of injuries after a crash has occurred is extremely time-sensitive: delays of minutes can make the difference between life and death. Improving post-crash care requires ensuring access to timely prehospital care, and improving the quality of both prehospital and hospital care, such as through specialist training programmes.
Effective interventions include designing safer infrastructure and incorporating road safety features into land-use and transport planning, improving the safety features of vehicles; enhancing post-crash care for victims of road traffic crashes; setting and enforcing laws relating to key risks, and raising public awareness.
In addition, WHO collaborates with partners to provide technical support to countries. For example, WHO is currently collaborating with the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS) to reduce fatalities and injuries from road traffic crashes in targeted low- and middle-income countries and cities.
In 2017, WHO released Save LIVES a road safety technical package which synthesizes evidence-based measures that can significantly reduce road traffic fatalities and injuries. Save LIVES: a road safety technical package focuses on Speed management, Leadership, Infrastructure design and improvement, Vehicle safety standards, Enforcement of traffic laws and post-crash Survival.
The package prioritizes 6 strategies and 22 interventions addressing the risk factors highlighted above, and provides guidance to Member States on their implementation to save lives and meet the road safety target of halving the global number of deaths and injuries from road traffic crashes by 2030.
Driving is a complex skill and must be practiced to do it well. Teenagers have a higher risk for crashes because they lack driving experience and because they often engage in risk-taking behaviors. The need for skill-building and driving supervision for new drivers is the basis for graduated driver licensing (GDL) systems.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety publishes a list of affordable vehicles that meet important safety criteria for teens. They also recently released a research paper explaining the benefits of newer vehicle technologies, like crash avoidance features and teen driver-specific technologies. These technologies have the potential to dramatically reduce teen crashes, injuries, and deaths.
From 2010 - 2014 in Fort Collins there were 1319 crashes that resulted in serious injuries and 18 crashes that resulted in death. Those crashes are broken down by type on the chart below. Bicycle, pedestrian, right angle, approach turn, and rear end crashes made up over 70% of these serious crashes. It is our goal to try to reduce these types of crashes that are most likely to cause serious injuries to people.
Pennsylvania State Police have charged a Philadelphia man with aggravated assault by vehicle, endangering the welfare of children, DUI as well as multiple other traffic violations following a crash on Baltimore Pike in Middletown late Friday evening, one of three significant crashes within about eight hours separated by short distances on the pike.
As a result of the crash, Limestone Road is closed at the intersection with Milltown Road for emergency response vehicles on scene. Motorists are advised to avoid the area and seek alternate routes of travel. The road closure is anticipated to be lengthy, with no estimated time for a re-opening.
At approximately 9:16 p.m. Amsterdam Police were notified by Montgomery County 911 of reports of a serious motor vehicle accident that had just occurred on State Highway 5s in Amsterdam near the intersection with Destefano Street. At the same time, an Amsterdam Police Patrol Sergeant who had been on routine patrol in the area called out observing the same incident.
The driver of the Equinox was the sole occupant of the vehicle and was not injured in the crash. He is identified as a 52 year-old male from the City of Amsterdam. Police say he is fully cooperating with the investigation and there are no signs of impairment by drugs or alcohol.
Here is a collection of self-service crash data tools and frequently requested crash data products. Please refer to these tools and products before reaching out to the ODOT TDS Crash Request Group to request crash data.
A higher number of crashes are reported for the 2011 data file compared to previous years. This does not reflect an increase in annual crashes. The higher numbers result from a change to an internal departmental process that allows the Crash Analysis and Reporting Unit to add previously unavailable, non-fatal crash reports to the annual data file. Please be aware of this change when comparing pre-2011 crash statistics.
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death and acquired disability during the first four decades of life. While teen drivers have the highest crash risk, few studies examine the similarities and differences in teen and adult driver crashes. We aimed to: (1) identify and compare the most frequent crash scenarios-integrated information on a vehicle's movement prior to crash, immediate pre-crash event, and crash configuration-for teen and adult drivers involved in serious crashes, and (2) for the most frequent scenarios, explore whether the distribution of driver critical errors differed for teens and adult drivers. We analyzed data from the National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey, a nationally representative study of serious crashes conducted by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 2005 to 2007. Our sample included 642 16- to 19-year-old and 1167 35- to 54-year-old crash-involved drivers (weighted n=296,482 and 439,356, respectively) who made a critical error that led to their crash's critical pre-crash event (i.e., event that made the crash inevitable). We estimated prevalence ratios (PR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) to compare the relative frequency of crash scenarios and driver critical errors. The top five crash scenarios among teen drivers, accounting for 37.3% of their crashes, included: (1) going straight, other vehicle stopped, rear end; (2) stopped in traffic lane, turning left at intersection, turn into path of other vehicle; (3) negotiating curve, off right edge of road, right roadside departure; (4) going straight, off right edge of road, right roadside departure; and (5) stopped in lane, turning left at intersection, turn across path of other vehicle. The top five crash scenarios among adult drivers, accounting for 33.9% of their crashes, included the same scenarios as the teen drivers with the exception of scenario (3) and the addition of going straight, crossing over an intersection, and continuing on a straight path. For two scenarios ((1) and (3) above), teens were more likely than adults to make a critical decision error (e.g., traveling too fast for conditions). Our findings indicate that among those who make a driver critical error in a serious crash, there are few differences in the scenarios or critical driver errors for teen and adult drivers.
aa06259810