Strategic road safety policies and research needs in Europe and the United States of America

In this paper the policies set up by the European Union and the United States of America to decrease the crashes significantly in the near future are presented. These policies address specific issues of the road infrastructure, the driver and the vehicle. These policies as well as the experience gained up to now in the field of road safety have highlighted some areas of knowledge gaps in road safety, which have to be addressed in the near future from the transportation community worldwide. Those strategic research needs and recommendations ranging from crash data collection and analysis to road design issues are discussed, to give highway engineers in practice and academia the necessary impulses to tackle long-term, high-risk road safety problems.