Strategies and targets for reducing death and injury in road traffic accidents

Use of motor vehicles is a major contributor to accidental death and injury. Society's response involves government. business and a range of professions. as well as all of us as individuals. There are good reasons to expect the extent, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of action throughout society to reduce death and injury in road accidents to be enhanced by such action being integrated within a road safety strategy, and by those concerned being motivated by being involved in the setting of challenging but achievable targets for casualty reduction. British experience with a national road casualty reduction target set in 1987 for the year 2000 has led to recent work within an integrated transport policy to develop a road safety strategy incorporating a casualty reduction target for the year 2010. The formulation of this strategy and the setting of the associated target is being based upon forecasts of how numbers of casualties would be likely to change by 2010 under various scenarios for use of the roads and without new action for casualty reduction, accompanied by assessment of the probable effectiveness of such new actions as are likely to be implementable between now and 2010. At the supranational level, the European Union has published a road safety strategy demonstrating how action at that level can add to what can be achieved by individual Member States and more locally. This is a step towards meeting the relevant requirements of the Treaty of European Union.