Road safety refers to the methods used to prevent the road crashes and protect the road users such as pedestrians, cyclists, bikers and other vehicle passengers and drivers from getting injured or killed on the road. The key goal of road safety measures is to minimize the impact speed that affects the severity of the accident. It is estimated that around 1 million people die each year in road accidents.
The issue is more critical in developing nations. Serious injuries are caused due to severe speeding up. The speed of the vehicle should be limited as to ease the impact speed that can cause severe injuries to the victims on both the sides. The other factors that can cause accidents are driver’s illness or fatigue, drink and drive, vehicle break fails or steering failure and poor roadside zones to name a few.
Safety can be improved by responsible driving and following traffic rules or by designing the vehicles in a way to decrease the intensity of the crash. Traffic calming measures are used to improve the road safety. The modern paradigm of road safety replaces the killed or seriously injured (KSI) rates with the accident rates i.e. accidents per million vehicle miles. With improvement in the road constructions there are several safety related methods and systems designed to improve the road safety.
