The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) and ITF have published new Guidelines for Conducting Road Safety Data Reviews promoting the iRAP Methodology as a useful guide for assessing and monitoring road section risk.

In many countries around the world, deficiencies in data or data quality impair evidence-based road safety policy making. While many countries collect road safety data, the collection is not necessarily comprehensive. Further, many countries can be unaware of data gaps in their system, which prevents them from soundly analyzing their road safety problems.

Road safety data definitions and collection methods must converge into standard international criteria, thus allowing for comparisons in space – across countries – and in time.

The iRAP Star Rating provides a critical and internationally standardised safety engineering indicator to assess and monitor road infrastructure risk to road user groups and inform strategic investment to maximise road trauma reduction.

Regional road safety observatories, which have been developed, for example, in Latin America (OISEVI), Africa (ARSO), and Asia-Pacific (APRSO) present an opportunity for joint regional efforts to improve, in a harmonized way, road safety data collection and analysis.

Regional road safety observatories promote the adoption of a common set of road safety indicators based on common definitions and serve as an avenue to assist countries in improving the management of their crash data systems.

iRAP is working with the Observatories to support improved road safety data and accessibility to countries. The 2-part iRAP Innovation Workshop, co-hosted with the Observatories in Africa (ARSO), Asia-Pacific (APRSO), Ibero-America (OISEVI), Europe (ERSO), Western Balkans (WBRSO) and Eastern Partnership member states (EaP) in October last year, looked at “Data-Driven Innovation to Halve Road Fatalities and Injuries by 2030”.

Download the Guidelines here. Access the iRAP Innovation Workshop presentations and recording here.