Why use safety ratings?

The level of ambition associated with current European targets and safer system approaches and goals such as Sustainable Safety and Vision Zero requires:

• Greater attention than before to the provision of a safer network, safer vehicles, better emergency care systems and compliance of users with key safety rules
• More account to be taken than before of human limitations, speed and kinetic energy in road safety interventions and in the institutional arrangements needed to deliver them
• Meaningful shared responsibility to improve safety on the part of system providers (for the road network, vehicles and the emergency medical system) as well as users, focusing particularly on the linkages necessary between different parts of the system

Safety ratings today address such needs and are used as:

• Road safety interventions to improve standards and designs through the publication of impartial information which gives system providers an incentive to make improvements
• Policy monitoring tools
• Setting specific intermediate or sub-targets for road safety strategies around which stakeholders can focus activity and resource