Road accidents are a leading cause of death and disability worldwide, with nearly 1.2 million people killed and over 50 million people injured each year. Globally, more than 1 of every 4 deaths occur among pedestrians and cyclists, reports the World Health Organization introducing the upcoming UN Global Road Safety Week (12-18 May 2025).
In the US, the fatality rate is estimated at 14 per 100,000 people, while that of Europe is 6.5 per 100,000 people. Recent studies calculated that road crashes cost $1.7 trillion annually worldwide. Last February, Ministers from 100 countries endorsed the Marrakesh Declaration calling road safety as a political priority and asking for adequate funding and actions to achieve the UN goal of halving road deaths by 2030.
Generally speaking, there is a pressing need for new systems to prevent traffic accidents. Vehicles are increasingly equipped with sensors, advanced driver-assistance systems, and automatic emergency braking that improve navigation and safety. Infrastructure is also becoming more intelligent to enable traffic monitoring and control, thus contributing to accident prevention and quicker intervention when needed.
Cities are absolutely part of the game. According to the International Transport Forum – coordinating the ‘Safer City Streets’ initiative at the OECD since 2016 –, smart technology plays an increasingly important role in road safety and feed both accurate monitoring (think of video surveillance at critical junctions or along busy itineraries) and data-driven decisions related to traffic engineering and speed management.
The timing and configuration of traffic lights are also very important. A simple but effective example is the optimization of pedestrian intervals: real-life experiments proved that indicating “walk” to pedestrians several seconds before turning traffic gets a green light improves pedestrian safety a lot, making them more visible and decreasing the risk of being hit by a car.
Vehicles are becoming increasingly connected by devices that interact with each other and the road infrastructure. Data flows resulting from Vehicle to Everything (V2X) technologies and their interaction with the so called Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems can feed emergency braking warning, distance sensing, improper-driving detection, collision-avoidance systems, weather-related skid warnings, and optimized intersection management.
But road safety is not only about private motor vehicles and pedestrians. As micro mobility and cycle riding are on the up, cities are increasingly looking at road safety from a wider perspective. Space is being reallocated, effective parking management and curb management are needed to ensure a safe access to different urban transportation systems. Smart technologies are definitely part of the improvements being made to road infrastructure.