Road safety research provides the essential framework of knowledge for development of effective Road safety policies and interventions. Even very simple research such as coroners simply recording presence of alcohol amongst those killed or students just counting the numbers of persons using seat belts in front and rear seats of vehicles or counting the numbers of vehicles exceeding the speed limits to get the proportion exceeding speed lmits, can help to give better understanding of the scale of a problem and possible interventions which might be needed to reduce risks of road crashes.

IRSC core team have extensive experience of implementing both simple and complex road safety research projects and can provide guidance to local academics in our collaborating organisations on how to start doing small research projects with their students to gather basic information in such countries. IRSC team can assist local academics in designing the research activities and provide guidance on analysing such data. They can also perhaps later work with local academics to jointly publish the research results in relevant scientific journals. This will help local academics to get published in international scientific journals . It will also start to assemble the sorts of statistics and evidence that can be used by government officials to persuade political decision makers to allocate funding to permit action on road safety issues.

Such research (usually done initially without any external funding) will come to be recognized by government officials as very useful to aid / support policy making and will result in funding becoming available for road safety research. Belgrade university academics at the start of their efforts to develop road safety activities in Serbia had to do the basic research without any external funding. However having demonstaretd the value of such road safety research, they now have a very active road safety research section where numerous commissioned (i.e. externally funded ) road safety research projects are being undertaken by specialist road safety researchers for private sector, for Serbian government organisations and for many other organisations. The academics involved are now recognised road safety experts in their fields and often called upon to be expert witnesses in court cases and to provide consulting advice in their ares of expertise.

Textbooks and /or training materials that may be prepared in this sector include guidance on undertaking small road safety research projects to start developing road safety research activies.