Journal of Road Safety – Volume 32, Issue 4, 2021

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Road Safety Policy & Practice

What does it Take to Improve Road Safety in Asia?

Madan B. Regmi

Transport Division, United Nations, ESCAP, Bangkok, Thailand, Email: [email protected]

Key Findings

• Critically reviews road safety policy and practices in Asian countries;

• Despite government efforts, road fatalities are increasing in Asia;

fatalities. There are wide variations in the number of road fatalities among the regions, subregions, and countries. Within

Asia, the South and South-West Asia subregion has the highest fatality rate of 20.3 fatalities per 100,000 population

followed by South-East Asia with a fatality rate of 17.8 per 100,000 population. This paper reviews and analyses the

road safety situation and implementation of road safety policies and practices in Asian countries. Identied are distinct

risk factors that demand priority consideration. Some of the actions suggested for improving road safety in Asia are:

Ensuring the availability of accurate road safety data, addressing the challenges of Vulnerable Road Users and powered

two-wheelers, changing behaviors of road users and long haul drivers, ensuring safety features in trunk routes, improving

infrastructure and facilities for non-motorised and public transport in cities, prioritising safety in rural and remote areas,

empowering road safety institutions with accountability, focusing on low-cost solutions, and advocacy and education.

Keywords

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) (UN, 2015) and

the adoption of several resolutions on road safety by the

United Nations. Asian countries are implementing various

road safety policies, action plans and projects. Despite

these efforts, the number of road crashes and fatalities

is increasing in Asia (WHO, 2018), with the fatality rate

being especially high in many Asian countries. Progress in

improving road safety varies between countries (Wegman,

2017).

a leading cause of mortality, the United Nations again

proclaimed the period 2021-2030 as the Second Decade

of Action for Road Safety with the objective of reducing

fatalities and injuries by 50% by 2030 and encouraging

efforts to improve road safety in developing countries (UN,

2020). Development of a new global plan of action for the

second decade is progressing and provides the opportunity

for countries to rene their national road safety policies

and practices to reduce trafc crashes, injuries, and

fatalities. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has

Journal of Road Safety – Volume 32, Issue 4, 2021

30

targets for road safety”, a guidance note on 12 road safety

risk factors which were identied by several members of

the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration (Van den

Berghe, et al., 2020).

A revisit of national policies and action plans, tackling

of key risk factors and a thorough analysis of local

environment and practices is necessary to determine why

global and national responses to road safety did not bring

In this context, the paper reviews the current situation of

Method

The paper includes both quantitative and qualitative

analyses of road safety data, policies, and practices. It

reviews the road safety situation and implementation of

road safety policies, action plans and practices in Asian

countries. It also reviews relevant materials and literature

on road safety and compiles some good practices in the

Asian context. It utilises information from WHO and

country reports, and data and feedback received from road

safety stakeholders at three meetings held in Kathmandu

,

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   

Journal of Road Safety – Volume 32, Issue 4, 2021

32

New Delhi

. Based on the analysis, policy

the region is 18.35, which is slightly higher than the global

average (18.14). Road safety presents a large challenge

to Asian countries which are paying a high price for it

(Wismans et al., 2016). In the majority of road crashes,

fatalities and serious injuries are preventable by reducing

the risk factors.

shows some reduction of these rates in East and North-East

Asia, North and Central Asia and South-East Asia. But

the fatality rate has increased globally, in the Asia-Pacic

fatalities between 2010 and 2013, fatalities increased by

10.8% from 2013 to 2016.

Figure 3 shows the estimated fatalities and fatality rate per

100,000 population for selected Asian countries in 2016.

The fatality rate is very high for Thailand (32.7), Vietnam

(26.6), India (22.6), Myanmar (19.9) and China (18.2).

Pakistan’s fatality rate is moderate, but it faces additional

safety and security challenges due to the ongoing effects of

the war on terror (Nazir et al, 2016). In terms of aggregate

numbers, the number of fatalities is very high in India

This high number of fatalities in Asian countries calls for

a lot more focused and targeted polices and actions at the

national level to improve road safety.

Results

Ideally no one should be killed in a road crash. Some

developed countries are pursuing ambitious safety plan

and policies of vision zero (Kristianssen et. al, 2018). The

assessment of road safety in Asia revealed that instead of

decreasing, road fatalities are increasing in many

Table 1 shows the comparison of fatalities for Asian

countries for the year 2010 and 2016. Only Maldives,

Indonesia and Singapore showed meaningful reductions.

However, the overall fatalities increased by 25% in South-

Asia with only a reduction of 3% in South-East Asia.

The number of fatalities increased signicantly in the

Philippines, Myanmar, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. Brunei

Number of

Fatalities in

Table 1: Comparison of number of fatalities in selected

(Source: WHO, 2013 and 2018)

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also made substantial progress in reducing fatalities, from

2020). Despite the high number of fatalities in India, road

safety has not received priority attention, and thus requires

more political attention and commitment (Singh, 2017).

Asian countries have been implementing subregional

post-crash care (WHO, 2011). However, while it is good to

have national strategies and policies, their implementation,

monitoring and follow-up has been lacking in many cases.

It is evident

implementing similar activities and projects to improve

road safety. Most national level activities focused on

developing policies and strategies, improving black spots,

capacity building, road safety campaigns and awareness

Journal of Road Safety – Volume 32, Issue 4, 2021

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fatalities. The “Our Road Our Lives” community

VRUs and young drivers to encourage safe behaviour

(Sanghi, 2020). The programme demonstrated that

continuous community engagement, road safety awareness

Asia and South-East Asia. Their popularity is partly due to

economic prosperity, the lack of accessible public transport

and their ability to slip through congested streets. Table 2

shows the total vehicle eet and number of powered two

and three wheelers. It shows that the share of powered

two and three wheelers range from 54% to 93% in Asian

countries. Its share is 93% in Vietnam, 84% in Myanmar,

83% in Indonesia, 80% in Maldives and 73% in India. The

share of two wheelers is low in Afghanistan, Bhutan, and

Singapore.

improved by accommodating the infrastructure needs of

VRUs and providing adequate space for non-motorised

transport (NMT) modes (Mohan et al., 2020). While

there has been greater focus on the enforcement of helmet

use for riders and pillion riders, it is also important that

the helmet meets a quality standard. But many Asian

countries do not have specied helmet standards as well

as a lack of regulation and enforcement of helmet use. It

is equally important to address other risk factors related

to infrastructure and their integration into policies.

2013). However, there are questions about the standards

and quality of helmets available in markets in Vietnam as

vehicle eet

Table 2: Share of 2 and 3 wheelers in vehicle eet, 2016

Source: WHO, 2018

South-

East

Source: WHO, 2018

Journal of Road Safety – Volume 32, Issue 4, 2021

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well as other Asian countries.

Additional efforts are required to reduce risk to VRUs as

these modes constitute the highest share of urban travel

and a high percentage of fatalities (Larson and Henning,

2013; Mohan, 2011; Houque et al., 2008; Gutierrez and

Mohan, 2020). Yet specic issues related to VRUs are not

part of the WHO’s 12 voluntary road safety targets (Van

den Berghe et. al., 2020). Addressing the safety of VRUs

presents an opportunity to substantially reduce fatalities

and is also a relatively low-cost option.

For most of the cities the fatality rates from road crashes

are better than the national road fatality rate. This could

be partly due to the concentration of population in cities

,

slower vehicle speed resulting from trafc congestion,

strict enforcement of trafc rules, and awareness of trafc

rules among urban residents. However, the fatality rates in

Dhaka, Greater Jakarta, and Khulna, are surprisingly low

and suggest the possibility of under-reporting.

Transport policies need to embrace the tenets of safe and

sustainable mobility by prioritising public transport and

discouraging personal mobility (Stevenson and Bhalla,

2020). In many Indian cities fatalities are 30% higher

private vehicles in streets which can contribute to reducing

the number road crashes. Informal (unregulated smaller

vehicle) transport is prevalent in many Asian cities and

complement public transport. However, quality of service

and safety is also a major concern (Phun and Yai, 2016).

For countries with lower fatality rates in cities, there may

be a need to be prioritisation and implementation of safety

measures for roads in remote areas and rural roads.

The availability of periodic and accurate road safety data

and estimated fatality data for some Asian countries. The

difference between reported and estimated data ranges

from 1.5 to 10 times multiplier. For example, the estimated

fatalities is almost double the reported number of fatalities

in India and Myanmar, almost three times that ofcially

reported in Vietnam, more than three times that ofcially

reported in Afghanistan, more than six times that ofcially

reported in Pakistan and more than 10 times that ofcially

reported in Bangladesh (WHO, 2018). Police and hospitals

are usually the primary sources of national road safety

Furthermore, there is often a discrepancy between date

sources reporting fatalities for the lower and middle

income countries (LMICs). It is worth noting that fatality

data presented by LMICs at recent road safety meetings

are often different than that reported and estimated in the

WHO reports. In the absence of accurate data, the planning

and monitoring of progress becomes difcult. WHO

reports are widely used and referred to by researchers,

Table 4: Fatality rate per 100,000 population in cities

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Asian countries:

• The number of road crash fatalities is increasing in

many Asian countries.

• A lack of periodic and accurate road safety data and

data analysis for focused and targeted road safety

Reported

number of

Cambodia 1,852 2,803

Vietnam 8,417 24,970

Journal of Road Safety – Volume 32, Issue 4, 2021

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speed (ESCAP, 2019c), safe road infrastructure (UNRSC,

2020) and targeting the ve risk factors for improving road

safety (Hyder et al., 2017, WHO-ROSEA, 2015, Pedan and

Puvanachandra, 2019). Countries could also consider new

approaches in enforcing seat belt use, speed management,

and their relationship in tackling road safety (Mwebesa et

al., 2018, Gupta et al., 2017) and exploring the interactions

between road safety risk and inuencing factors (Shah et

While it is difcult to prescribe a one-t-all strategy,

helmets, drug use, mobile phone use, speeding, drink

driving), advocacy, education and awareness training,

changing road users behaviours, use of technology, and

A review of road safety in Asian countries was presented.

Implementation of road safety policies and action plans

in most countries have not led to an overall reduction in

fatalities from road crashes. Many Asian countries like

Thailand, Vietnam, India, Myanmar and China continue

Some of the distinct characteristics of the road safety

problem in Asia are a high share of powered two- and

three- wheeler vehicles in their vehicle eets, more

fatalities among VRUs, high number of fatalities per

crashes in countries with mountainous terrain, high

number of crashes involving truck drivers on major trunk

routes, high speed and careless driving during festive

seasons and lack of accurate and timely road safety data.

In many cases, countries also lack a systematic and holistic

approach to tackle these road safety issues.

national road safety strategies taking a safe system

approach, reducing risk factors, and addressing the distinct