Road crashes remain the leading cause of death for young people worldwide. A new report from the Global Road Safety Facility reveals both progress and urgent challenges in making roads safer.

Road Safety is Everyone’s Business

Highlights of the Annual Report 2024 by the Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF)

(Global Road Safety Facility (2024). Global Road Safety Facility Annual Report 2024. Washington DC: Global Road Safety Facility, World Bank).

The WHO’s latest Global Status Report revealed a slight decline in road fatalities—from 1.35 million in 2016 to 1.19 million in 2021—showing that safety efforts are making a difference, even as global travel rises. But road crashes remain the top cause of death for young people 5-29 years and the 12^th leading cause of death for people of all ages and surpasses deaths due to HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria.

Road traffic fatalities and injuries impose high costs on society, especially on the poor and the working-age population. In addition to the loss of life and toll on human health, they result in lost productivity, property damage, legal and judicial costs, out-of-pocket expenses, and public healthcare expenditures. Road crashes cost low and middle-income economies the equivalent of 2-6 percent of their GDP each year. Without urgent action, road traffic crashes will keep rising as the demand for mobility in low and middle-income countries grows”.

The development objective of the GRSF is to support low- and middle-income countries to halve their road traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030. The aim to achieve these aims revolves around 3 pillars of action: Policies and investments, programs and innovations, and knowledge and expertise.  All of the above action areas are based on developing a “Safe System” which includes safe roads, safe road users, safe vehicles, safe speeds and post-crash care. In the FY 2024, the World Bank approved $2.98 billion in new lending for road and urban transport projects in LMICs. Of this amount, $315 million (10.6 percent) was allocated specifically to road safety, which was catalyzed and informed by GRSF. This resulted in 26 LMIC countries with active road safety grants.

Moreover, there is also a $358 million Bangladesh Road Safety Project, approved in mid-2023, which is the World Bank’s first stand-alone and multisectoral road safety project in South Asia, and the largest that the World Bank has ever approved.  Bangladesh has about 25,000 road fatalities each year and 200,000 seriously injured patients. Over the last 30 years Bangladesh’s road crash fatality rate has been about 3 x that of the broader region and the Government has committed to improving the dire situation.

The investment is specifically designed to support Bangladesh with a comprehensive and long-term national program to improve road safety.

India also has received support for World Bank financed road safety projects.

Despite slight improvement during the Covid-19 pandemic, India’s road safety situation continues to worsen as its population grows. According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, the country recorded around 155,000 fatalities in 2019, which fell to approximately 133,000 in 2020 during the pandemic, only to rebound to over 171,000 in 2022—the highest absolute number of annual road crash fatalities in the world. To help improve road safety conditions in the world’s most populous country, GRSF is providing support to two World Bank-financed Road projects in India: the Green National Highways Corridor Project, and the Assam Disaster Resilient Hill Roads Development Project.

Read the GRSF Annual Report 2024