Road safety performance indicators : updated country comparisons. SafetyNet, Building the European Road Safety Observatory, Workpackage 3, Deliverable 3.11a.

This report presents an overview of recent figures of chosen safety performance indicators of 29 European countries – the 27 EU member states, complemented with Norway and Switzerland. The comparison is done for five road safety performance indicators in the following areas: alcohol and drugs, speeds, protective systems, daytime running lights, and trauma management. These indicators were developed earlier within the SafetyNet project. On the basis of the data obtained from the collaborating countries, a first cross-country comparison of safety performance was presented. The aim of this report is to present and analyze updated figures of safety performance indicators and to show their recent development. The comparison could be made for 29 countries (27 EU countries, Switzerland and Norway). The response on the update questionnaire distributed to the National experts was received from 21 countries, thus not allowing exhaustive comparisons of developments in time. In general, comparing the countries' performances remains difficult in several areas of SPIs. The main reasons are the lack of data, poor quality of the data, or the incomparability of the (seemingly similar) data due to different national definitions or circumstances of measurement. The improvement in data quality through the applications of guidelines introduced earlier by the SafetyNet Road Safety Performance Indicators team was noticed for several countries. In spite of all considerations and limitations, we are able to present a great number of comparisons in this report, or to present the figures that can form the basis for future comparisons. Reliable comparisons are made for the areas daytime running lights, protective systems, and trauma management. Only limited comparisons are made for the areas speeds and alcohol and drugs. The number of countries collecting data on SPIs has slightly grown since the previous comparison and the data quality and comparability have improved in certain countries as well. At EU level, no major differences were found in the performance in 2005 and in 2007 for most SPIs, but the performance of certain countries has likely improved considerably. The data for 2008 and 2009 must however be assessed in order to determine whether the trend is sustainable or short term one only. (Author/publisher