Road Safety. When zero is a value – e-book (pdf)

Descrizione pubblicazione

Last year road crashes caused over 1.2 million deaths, of which 260 thousand children and 59 million injured. Road crashes are becoming the seventh cause of death in the world. Nevertheless, it is not World War III. It is the world road crash bulletin. In fact, roads are indispensable: they connect the world, allow exchanges, transport food and energy for life. However, roads can also claim lives. Thanks to new technologies and prevention campaigns, deaths have drastically decreased to about 25 thousand in the EU and to 3,242 in Italy where roads have become safer presenting a -20% with respect to 2015.

Italy ranks 14th in Europe with an average of 54,2 deaths per million inhabitants.

Road victims have decreased by 52% since 2001. It’s a number bound to further decrease thanks to safer roads and smarter vehicles. However, in order to win the road safety challenge, we need to prevent, to punish wrong behaviors and to invest more and more in new technologies. The international most accredited theories tend to rely on technologies, which are able to avoid road crashes despite the wrong behaviors while driving. In addition, it is fundamental to share best practices all over the world on road safety.

This is the aim of this Report written by Leonardo Annese. The report is a very useful tool to share the best experiences in Italy and in the world in order to reduce the number of deaths and injuries on the roads.
Statistics highlight that the continent with the safest roads is Europe where the number of deaths has halved since 2001. Sweden is the country with the safest roads: deaths have decreased to 264 per year dropping by 4/5 since 1970, despite the number of vehicles have doubled since then.