This report is a deliverable of PIARC working group 3.1.1 Specific road safety issues for LMICs. The working group performed its activities in the period 2019 – 2023. We prepared two deliverables: a) a literature review and b) an overview of case studies.

The present report gives the literature review. The review starts from the notion that road safety is a multifaceted problem which requires a multi-disciplinary approach. The safe system approach is generally considered as the central concept for this purpose and this starting point is also taken in this study. However new directions are needed to make the safe system work in LMICs. The period of the first UN Decade of Action for Road Safety has brought us a series of valuable problem analysis and overview articles prepared by a variety of institutions and institutes. As a PIARC working group we did not repeat this effort, but used it as a starting point to indicate which specific issues do require a boost in LMICs for the coming period up to 2030. We concluded that the following 12 issues deserve special attention:

I.UN Sustainable Development Goals : integral approach

II.Safety culture

III.Road safety management and leadership:

IV.Building road safety expertise and science

V.The transportation system as a whole

VI.City design, architecture, land use, rural planning.

VII.Cost effectiveness

VIII.Legislation and enforcement

IX.Speed

X.Sustainable safe roads

XI.Vehicles as a safe system component

XII.Post-crash health care

In order to make clear that the road safety problem is to be approached as a system, we organized these issues in three levels, considering organizational and cultural aspects (strategical), network and traffic system related aspects (tactical) and component related aspects (operational).

For each of these issues we describe a short state of the art, which results in a number of focus areas that need particular attention from the LMIC point of view.