Inter-national benchmarking of road safety: State of the art

Road traffic injuries and fatalities have nowadays been recognized as one of the most important public health issues that requires concerted efforts for effective and sustainable prevention. Given the fact that more and more countries are taking steps to improve their road safety situation, there is a growing need for these countries to work together more closely, because there are quite a number of common problems that can be identified in close cooperation, and improvement can be expected by learning lessons from existing best practices in other countries. As a consequence, comparison between a range of countries in terms of their road safety performance and development or - using state-of-the-art terminology - inter-national benchmarking of road safety, is currently widely advocated by most countries and international bodies as an emerging methodology for road safety improvement. However, performing a successful road safety benchmarking practice is by no means easy. Challenges exist from the definition of benchmarking framework at the very beginning to the final decisions in terms of identification of best practices and establishment of a continuous process of mutual learning. In this paper, the theoretical background of the benchmarking approach is introduced, and a specific benchmarking cycle for road safety is established which consists of five core activities. Moreover, as a valuable benchmarking tool, the development of a road safety index is highlighted, and some theoretical and practical issues on this subject are discussed.