73rd Road Safety Congress: Securing Wider Engagement in road safety

One of the key challenges for road safety is to encourage positive engagement from individuals, communities, organisations, the media and government. Improved road safety benefits everyone: individual road users, families and communities, and society in general. It reduces death and injury, improves the quality and dependability of travel, saves an enormous amount of wasted resources and enhances our quality of life. However, it can be difficult to engage people and organisations in road safety. It can be portrayed as boring, as the nanny-state infringing personal freedom, or as unimportant. At best, a lack of engagement can mean that road safety policies and activities are not as effective as they could be; at worst, there can be active resistance to, or deliberate disregard of, road safety measures.