The International Transport Forum marks 25 years of IRTAD.

12 November 2014

International Transport Forum’s road safety working group IRTAD is at the forefront of supporting policies that save lives

For 25 years, IRTAD has worked to improve traffic safety data, to enable more effective road safety strategies and save lives. Founded with 12 member countries as a database, IRTAD soon brought together road safety experts and statisticians from research institutes, national administrations, international organisations, universities, automobile associations and car manufacturers. Today, IRTAD has 70 members from 35 countries.

Among the most important initiatives have been twinning projects, started in 2008 with the goal of assisting non-member countries in improving their national crash data systems. A successful twinning between Argentina and Spain led to the creation in 2011, of the Ibero-American Road Safety Observatory (OISEVI), a co-operation platform for the directors for road safety from 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries. IRTAD supports OISEVI through the new IRTAD-LAC database. Other important IRTAD outputs include the Road Safety Annual Report and international conferences.

“Far too many people are dying or being seriously injured in road crashes in the world. We’d like to bring these numbers down”, said IRTAD group chairman Fred Wegman. “For that we need evidence and data. It is very good to see how IRTAD has developed into a world leader when it comes to road safety data. I thank all of our members, and this is also an invitation for others to join this network.”