Improving Road Safety
in the OIC Member States
11
Projections of the predicted development of traffic fatalities in the various world regions
showed that over the period 2000 to 2020, a global increase of 66% was anticipated (Kopits &
Cropper, 2003), with all the regions showing increases, although high income countries, as a
separate group, were anticipated to show significant decline in the number of traffic fatalities,
as indicated i .
Table 1: Predicted road traffic fatalities in low and medium income countries
Middle and Low
Income Countries
by World Bank
Region
No. of
Countries
Estimated Number of
Fatalities (x 1000) by
year
Percentage
Change
2000-20
%
Fatality Rates
(death/100,000
population)
2000 2020 2000 2020
South Asia 7 135 330 143.9 10.2 18.9
East Asia and
Pacific
15 188 337 79.8 10.9 16.8
Middle East and
North Africa
13 56 94 67.5 19.2 22.3
Latin America and
Caribbean
31 122 180 48.1 26.1 31.0
Europe and Central
Asia
9 32 38 18.2 19.0 21.2
All Middle and Low
income countries
121 613 1,124 83.3 13.3 19.0
All High income
countries
35 110 80 -27.8 11.8 7.8
Global Average 156 723 1,204 66.4 13.0 17.4
Source: Kopits & Cropper, Table 8
The Decade of Action
Given the impact of traffic related deaths in especially low and middle income countries, the
United Nations launched its Decade of Action for Road Safety in over 100 countries in 2011. The
ultimate aim of the programme was to prevent five million road traffic deaths by 2020.
The activities in the Decade of Action are built on five pillars:
1. Road Safety Management;
2. Safer Roads and Mobility;
3. Safer Vehicles;
4. Safer Road Users;
5. Post-crash Response.
1 Figures are adjusted for under reporting.