Capacity building for road safety in LMICs: the need for a sustainable local knowledge and research infrastructure

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55329/weks9456

Keywords:

education, evidence based policy, knowledge infrastructure, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), research, road safety

Abstract

Road crashes continue to be a major cause of death and serious injury for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). At the global level, 90% of traffic fatalities occur in these countries with a dramatic daily amount of 3 260 road deaths, many of whom are children. The first UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020 was designed to develop a massive movement towards a decrease of these numbers. This resulted in many initiatives to introduce the safe system approach in LMICs, i.e. to implement road safety management, make roads, road users, and vehicles safer, and improve post-crash health care. International organisations together with NGOs and universities prepared road safety guides and manuals, gave courses and webinars, introduced auditing and inspection systems, with the overall intention to build capacity in LMICs. Together these actions contributed to a variety of road safety developments in LMICs but the overall results were still modest. At the third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Stockholm, 2020, and in the Global Status report by the World Health Organization, 2023, the results of all efforts were presented and evaluated. Many countries made progress through road safety management and better legislation addressing risk factors such as speeding, drinking and driving, failing to use seatbelts, and poor infrastructure design. However, the reduction in road deaths strongly lagged behind the original goals. Continued implementation of programs and development of new approaches are needed to make a breakthrough, and to reach the goals of the 2nd Decade of Action, i.e. a 50% reduction in fatalities by 2030, and the same percentage reduction in injuries. The present position paper argues that despite the enormous amount of road safety information, which has been and is ‘sent’ to LMICs, and despite the quality and robustness of international organisations behind these programs, there is a shortfall in the scale of the knowledge and research infrastructure currently existing in LMICs, which is needed to ‘receive and transfer’ this knowledge. In order to develop evidence-based policy, LMICs need research programs that are able to transfer safe system principles to the local context and culture. Several literature overviews illustrate the lack of such research in LMICs, i.e. the limited number of programs at local universities and research institutes. Although recently initiatives have been taken in some countries, the implementation of such programs is urgently needed. Based on this observation we call on international organisations to establish a special program for the development of a sustainable road safety knowledge and research infrastructure in LMICs. Such structural local capacity is a prerequisite to translate international road safety knowledge into local guidelines and to develop an evidence-based road safety policy. Most importantly, this local infrastructure will give countries a national knowledge bank, thus providing them with an urgently needed sustainable road safety memory.

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Author Biographies

Hans Godthelp, Road safety for all, the Netherlands

Hans Godthelp is senior consultant at Road safety for all. He is retired as a deputy director at TNO Human Factors and former professor traffic safety at University of Groningen. During his research career he worked on the concepts of self-explaining roads and driver support systems. His present focus is on the development of sustainable road safety knowledge infrastructure in LMICs. He is member of the PIARC Technical Committee on Road Safety.

CRediT contribution: Conceptualization, Methodology, Visualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

Paul Wesemann, Road safety for all, the Netherlands

Paul Wesemann is managing director and secretary of the Board at the foundation Road safety for all. He worked at SWOV from 1977 till 2012 as researcher, head of department, and program manager. He founded the Road Safety for All in 2009. He provided consultancies in Cambodia, and helped building Delft Road Safety Courses from 2011 till 2023.

CRediT contribution: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

Henk Stipdonk, KiM Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analysis, the Netherlands

Henk Stipdonk is Director of KiM, the Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analysis. He was chair of two consecutive ITF working groups on implementing the Safe System approach, and co-chair of the ETSC PiN-panel. He has been working as a research manager at SWOV between 2004 and 2019.

CRediT contribution: Writing—review & editing.

Mark King, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Mark King is Adjunct associate professor at the Queensland Universtty of Technology. He has a long term experience in the enhancement of road safety in less motorised countries, taking  economic, institutional, social and cultural factors into account. Mark has developed and/or delivered customised courses for road safety professionals from/in Australia, New Zealand, and a range of East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian and South American countries.

CRediT contribution: Writing—review & editing.

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Published

2024-09-02

How to Cite

Godthelp, H., Wesemann, P., Stipdonk, H., & King, M. (2024). Capacity building for road safety in LMICs: the need for a sustainable local knowledge and research infrastructure. Traffic Safety Research, 8, e000063. https://doi.org/10.55329/weks9456