Road traffic safety
Road traffic safety is the prevention of death and injury in road traffic through measures that reduce crash risk and limit the harm crashes cause.
Safe System approach: A road-safety framework that assumes people make mistakes and designs the system to prevent deaths and serious injuries. It organizes prevention around shared responsibility and limits on crash forces.
Speed limit: A legal maximum speed for vehicles on a road or in a defined area. Speed limits set a direct boundary on crash risk and impact energy.
Traffic engineering: The engineering field concerned with the movement, control, and safety of road traffic. It supplies methods for managing traffic flows and reducing conflict points.
Road traffic injury: Physical harm caused by a collision or other incident involving road traffic. Injury burden captures serious outcomes beyond deaths alone.
Automated driving system: A vehicle system capable of performing part or all of the dynamic driving task under specified conditions. Automation may prevent some human errors while introducing new safety challenges.
Road traffic collision: An event in which a road user or vehicle collides with another road user, vehicle, animal, or object. Understanding how collisions occur identifies where prevention can interrupt them.
Seat belt: A vehicle restraint that holds an occupant in place during sudden deceleration or collision. Seat belts reduce the chance that occupants strike the vehicle interior or are ejected.
Road user: A person using a road, including drivers, passengers, pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. Safety measures must account for users with different levels of protection and vulnerability.
Road traffic fatality: A death resulting from a road traffic collision, commonly counted within a specified period after the crash. Fatality counts are a central measure of the most severe road-safety failure.
Road safety policy: Public rules and programs intended to reduce crashes, deaths, and injuries on roads. Policy choices determine enforcement, infrastructure investment, and accountability.