Infrastructure plays a crucial role in road safety. Well-designed, self-explaining roads can help people use roads safely and minimize the risk that a crash will occur. When a crash does happen, protective and forgiving road infrastructure can mean the difference between life and death. Infrastructure that emphasizes traffic calming and that caters to the needs of vulnerable road users (cyclists, motorcycle riders, pedestrians, children and people with disabilities) is particularly important in Low- and Middle-Income countries (LMICs) where 40-50% of deaths and injuries are often to vulnerable road users.

In this pillar, the focus will need to be on engineering solutions, which reduce speed through “traffic calming” measures and speed management, particularly in areas with a high volume of vulnerable road users such as school and residential zones, in built-up areas and in linear villages along major roads. Blackspot, mass action and route action improvement programmes should be implemented by each roads authority to improve safety on their existing road networks. It should be compulsory for each level of roads administration to apply effective access control and development controls to prevent unsafe access to their roads and to report annually on road safety of the network within their jurisdiction and to show what they have done to improve road safety since the previous year.

Textbooks and/or training materials that will be prepared in this sector will provide guidance on such issues so that safer road networks can be developed and maintained in each country.