The road safety toolkit – a free online tool to assist practitioners in developing countries

Worldwide, around 1.3 million people die each year on the roads, and as many as 50 million people are injured. Over 90% of these deaths occur in low and middle-income countries. With increased motorisation it is expected this problem will increase unless appropriate action is taken.

This paper presents an overview of the Road Safety Toolkit, which was developed for iRAP (the International Road Assessment Programme) in association with the Global Transport Knowledge Partnership (gTKP). The toolkit is a free online tool that has been produced to provide information on safety solutions to practitioners in developing countries. It is designed to assist in selecting appropriate road, vehicle and road user solutions. The toolkit uses the Safe System approach as its basis, making reference to key global road safety documents. The paper discusses why the toolkit has been developed, the process used in the development, some of the key features of the toolkit, and how it is being used internationally to achieve improvements in safety.