INTRODUCTION

The enormous social and economic costs associated with persistent, unacceptably high road collision frequencies have been recognized worldwide as a major problem for many decades. Over 3,000 people die worldwide each day from road collision injuries, roughly 1.2 million annually (WHO, 2004). A further 20 to 50 million people suffer injury and/or disability. Compared with other global health concerns, the magnitude of the toll in human lives lost due to road collisions is considered by many governments and health experts to be a problem of epidemic proportions (WHO, 2004; Gaspers, 2004). Injuries due to road collisions are the 11^th leading cause of death worldwide. If current trends continue, injuries from road collisions will be the third largest global ‘disease’ by 2020 (WHO, 2004; Gaspers, 2004). The economic cost of road collisions and injuries is estimated to range from 1% to 2% of gross national product (GNP) Worldwide, totaling US$518 billion annually (WHO, 2004).

European countries started their SUSTAINABLE ROAD SAFETY programs sooner than North American did. The start up program was in 1998-2001. The second phase was started in 2000 to 2010 .In the White Paper on European transport policy, the Commission proposed that the European Union should set itself the target of halving the number of road deaths by 2010, reducing the total number of deaths from almost 50 000 to 25 000. The latest figures, released on the occasion of the first European Road Safety Day, show clearly that this ambitious objective was justified: the last 12 months have seen an 8% reduction in fatalities. In 2006, nearly 12 000 lives were saved in the European Union in comparison with 2001.

Although it seems the programs in most European countries are working well, it is hard to compare their programs to find the most successful and the reasons of the success. Satatistical data for each country can be found here.

In Each country profile, you can find the number of fatalities injured and serious accident over 10 years period. They usually compare these data to find how they are doing. For comparison between different countries’ program Fatalities by population or fatal accident per total length of roads index usually is used. You can find the most recent comparison here.

However, they are not proper index for define which program is the efficient one. Imagine two country with the same number of fatalities per population e.g. Italy and Germany.

Map of rural fatalities per population

Italy is most mountainous country of Europe but Germany is so flat.

Map of mountainous area

Since it is more probable to have accident in the mountainous area, it is reasonable to assume that safety program in the Italy were more effective than Germany despite the fact that the number of fatalities per population in both countries are the same.