Chinese Road Safety Plan links with International Programme

22 April 2009

China is making a concerted effort to manage the tremendous growth in transport during recent years and will complement existing programmes, such as the Highway Safety Improvement Project which, by the end of 2005, had seen more than RMB6.5 billion invested in China’s highways. However road deaths are still far too high for so the Government has launched an action plan which aims for fewer than 90,000 road deaths annually by 2010. The plan led by the Ministry of Transport is supported across Government and is making use of the best international know-how and vehicle safety technology.

The Ministry of Transport’s Research Institute of Highways (RIOH) is now working in partnership with the International Roads Assessment Programme (iRAP) to assess the safety of 2,100km of roads in and around Beijing during the next 12-18 months. It will produce Risk Maps using historical crash and traffic data and then Star Ratings, now used in Europe and USA which illustrate the level of safety ‘built in’ to roads will become available to the public; then affordable and economic countermeasure plans will then be put in place to improve safety.