Improving Road Safety
in the OIC Member States
22
To effectively manage road safety requires commitment to a results focused approach. This
commitment plays a critical role in the success or failure in meeting a country’s road safety
ambition and related targets. Without a clear national political will to commit to road safety
improvement, the chances of successfully implementing an effective road safety management
system are slim.
3.4 The Road Safety Management System in Operation
The World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention issued by the World Health Organization
(WHO) and the World Bank in 2004, called for a drastic improvement of global road safety. It
recommended a range of urgent measures essential for a sustainable reduction of the social and
economic impacts of road accidents.
These recommendations have since been mandated by the UN General Assembly with the
release of the Decade of Action for Road Safety. The World Bank has since commissioned the
development of Guidelines for conducting road safety capacity reviews (Bliss & Breen, 2009) to
assist countries to implement these recommendations.
These guidelines incorporate a Road Safety Management System (RSMS) that was derived from
the pyramid model developed in New Zealand (LTSA, 2000) and applied in the SUNflower
projects (Koornstra et al., 2002; Morsink et al., 2005). Although there are other reports that
describe the Safe Systems Approach, for example the OECD Towards Zero - Ambitious Road
Safety Targets and the Safe System Approach (OECD, 2008); the methodology described in the
SUNflower project (Koornstra, et. al 2002) and the Sustainable Safety approach (Wegman and
Aarts, 2005), the Road Safety Management System (RSMS, see , developed for the
World Bank (Bliss and Breen, 2009) has many generic components that allow for it to be applied
to all countries and irrespective of the status of development or road safety performance in that
country. The guidelines introduce a systematic review process that is supported by checklists
and questionnaires. Although the guideline is intended for general use, the review process
described assumes the input of road safety experts and not merely a mechanistic process of
following a checklist or completing a questionnaire and trusting the outcomes. The reviewers
must have a thorough understanding of road safety and be able to probe and investigate issues
underlying reported problems. That requires experience, knowledge and understanding of all
aspects related to road safety and road safety management.