Every year, nearly 1.3 million peopleworldwide are killed in road crashes, which have become theleading cause of death among people between the ages offifteen and twenty-nine. More than 90 percent of the world sroad fatalities occur in developing countries, and half ofthe accident victims are pedestrians, cyclists, andmotorcyclists. Road accidents disproportionately affect thepoor, making road safety an economic development issue. Manycrash victims are of working age, and their death or seriousinjury too frequently leaves their dependents destitute.Governments in poorer countries have assumed they cannot actto reduce death rates until they are wealthier. However,many of today s road safety measures can be implementedrelatively inexpensively to reduce death rates, if managedcorrectly. The United Nations (UN) invited the World HealthOrganization (WHO) to coordinate a drive to improve roadsafety globally. It also proclaimed a decade of action forroad safety (2011 2020) to stabilize and then reduce thelevel of traffic fatalities and serious injuries around theworld. More than 100 countries as well as multilateraldevelopment banks, including the World Bank, support theinterventions. The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) isaware of the rapidly worsening road safety situation in thedeveloping world and efforts by the Bank's transportsector to encourage the use of best practices in roadprojects. This study, a pioneering learning product createdby IEG in cooperation with transport operational staff andthe Bank s Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF), aims toprovide useful knowledge to Bank operational staff involvedwith road safety, to support Bank and client countries infine tuning their road safety strategies and practices, andto support the acceleration of the Bank s operational roadsafety agenda.
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