Road Traffic Safety
Road traffic safety aims to reduce the harm (deaths, injuries, and property damage) on the highway system from traffic collisions and includes the design, construction and regulation of the roads, the vehicles that use them and also the training of drivers and other road-users. Improvement of road safety needs to be balanced with the provision of an effective efficient transport system. A report published by the World Health Organization in 2004 estimated that some 1.2m people were killed and 50m injured on the roads around the world each year and was the leading cause of death among children 10 – 19 years of age. The report also noted that the problem was most severe in developing countries and that simple prevention measures could halve the number of deaths. For reasons of clear data collection, only harm involving a road vehicle is included. A person tripping with fatal consequences or dying for some unrelated reason on a public road is not included in the relevant statistics.
Read more about this topic: Highway
Famous quotes containing the words road, traffic and/or safety:
“A novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews [sic] the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.”
—Francis Thompson (1859–1907)
“[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace between our parents’ safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)