Road Safety

The IDB's Road Safety Initiative is considered groundbreaking in the region. With this effort, the Bank aims to lead a process of change that will promote road safety actions in Latin America and the Caribbean with a view to permanently reduce the region's high rate of road accidents.

More than 1.2 million people die each year on the world's roads, and approximately 50 million suffer nonfatal injuries. The latest surveys of road safety in Latin America and the Caribbean show that the region's roadway fatality rate is approximately 17 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to the average for high-income countries of less than 10 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants. By 2020, these figures are expected to jump to 24 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants. Should these estimates and forecasts for 2020 prove accurate, Latin America and the Caribbean as a region will have the highest roadway fatality rate in the world.

To combat these alarming figures, the IDB is taking measures in the area of road safety. These include:

• Incorporating road safety into all transportation and road infrastructure operations
• Working closely with governments to design and implement national road-safety plans and/or strategies
• Securing adequate and stable financing for road-safety measures
• Promoting public awareness of the major risk factors of road accidents and supporting road-safety education in schools
• Improving hospital care for road victims and support for disabled people
• Forming closer partnerships with governments, the private sector, and civil society 

The initiative, furthermore, is built upon five strategic pillars which are consistent with the framework of the recent approved United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/64/L.44, which proclaims the period 2011-2020 the "Decade of Action for Road Safety".

• (i) Road safety management capacity
• (ii) Infrastructure
• (iii) Vehicle safety
• (iv) Road user behavior
• (v) Post-crash care for victims