Tackling the Road Safety Crisis: Saving Lives Through Research and Action

By: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and Transportation Research Board and Consensus and Advisory Studies Division and Committee on Transitioning Evidence-Based Road Safety Research into Practice

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Synopsis: The United States faces a road safety crisis: the fatal crash rate per mile traveled has been climbing for the past decade, and crashes involving vulnerable road users pedestrians, bicyclists, and others who share the roads with motor vehicles have grown the fastest. Furthermore, motor vehicle death rates in the United States are three to four times higher than other high-income nations in Europe and Asia. TRB Special Report 354: Tackling the Road Safety Crisis: Saving Lives Through Research and Action, from the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, addresses this crisis, responding to a request from the Federal Highway Administration, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The study makes a series of recommendations to the U.S. Department of Transportation, including establishing a coordinated, data-driven national road safety research strategy across all federally funded safety programs and improving the efficiency of moving crash intervention research results into practice. The study also calls for systematic research to confirm the validity of safety guidance for practitioners and eliminate outdated and unproven guidance. To accomplish these recommendations and raise the profile of U.S. road safety efforts, the study calls for the establishment of a National Road Safety Research Center.