Road safety in the U.S. has continued to worsen in recent years despite significant investments in motor vehicle safety research, says a new National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report. Traffic deaths and serious injuries have climbed over the past decade, and this U.S. crisis brings with it high human, social, and economic costs, including an estimated 40,000 deaths each year and nearly $500 billion yearly in monetary damages.

Minority communities and vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and bicyclists, have faced disproportionate impacts. And, while the direction of road management and in transportation and public health agencies is changing to be more inclusive of matters such as energy consumption, the environment, surrounding communities, and the safety of all road users, there are significant gaps and shortcomings, which the report identifies.

Previous studies have addressed the same issues, and in some cases made similar recommendations, but most of those recommendations have not been pursued, even as the country’s previous long-term gains in road safety waned. The report offers a coordinated set of actions intended to achieve more impactful outcomes that can be sustained over time, highlighting opportunities to address a range of issues. It says that with the right changes in strategy, evidence-based research on road safety can be translated into practice and that the U.S. can make meaningful advances.

The report urges the U.S. Department of Transportation to exercise leadership in rallying the involvement of the many parties across the country that are integral to road safety practice, the research enterprise, and the implementation of research results in the field. As part of these efforts, USDOT should establish a coordinated, data-driven national road safety research strategy across all federally funded safety programs. Persistent gaps in research agenda in relation to national crash outcomes is indicative of the lack of national-level guidance in road safety research planning and programming, so the report also calls for systematic research to confirm the validity of safety guidance for practitioners, and to eliminate outdated and unproven guidance.

Among the report’s other recommendations, USDOT should consider the creation of a National Road Safety Research Center to both raise the general profile of U.S. road safety efforts and to efficiently support the technical resources, guidance, tools, research products, and skilled workforce needed to make early and sustained progress in the quest for zero deaths and injuries from traffic-related crashes.

DETAILS: Tackling the Road Safety Crisis: Saving Lives Through Research and Action is available for immediate release. Media inquiries should be directed to the Office of News and Public Information at tel. 202-334-2138 or email news@nas.edu.