It is with great pleasure that I present the 2019 edition of the Annual Report of the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) which contains the most recent road safety data and upto-date information for 41 countries.

The years 2017 and 2018 have been encouraging for road safety in the majority of IRTAD countries. This is welcome as progress since 2013 had generally slowed. The average annual reduction was much greater between 2010 and 2013 than during the period 2013-17, despite encouraging results in 2017 and 2018.

Traffic-related mortality rates differ widely between countries. The risk of being killed in a road crash is six times higher in Argentina than in Norway, for instance. The mortality rate among the 33 countries with validated data ranged from 2 to 12 in 2017.

Vehicle occupants continue to benefit most from road safety improvements. The number of car occupants killed in crashes has decreased in all countries since 2010...

Young adults and teenagers benefitted most from the progress made in road safety since 2010. The number of young people aged 18-24 killed in traffic fell in all countries between 2010 and 2017. Overall, the number of road deaths in this age group decreased by 21.5% , much more significantly than for the overall population (-5.7%).

The majority of traffic fatalities occurred on rural roads. Inappropriate and relatively high speeds in combination with the lack of physical separation, poorly maintained roadsides, and mixed traffic involving vulnerable road users are characteristic for many rural roads and increase the occurrence of road crashes as well as their severity.

Traffic fatalities only show the tip of the iceberg. The number of road deaths is not a sufficient indicator for road safety. The global total of 1.35 million annual road deaths must be seen in the context of an estimated 20 to 50 million serious injuries sustained in crashes around the world every year, according to the 2018 WHO Global Status Report on Road Safety. The wide margin of the estimate suggests the importance of increased investment in the collection and analysis of data on serious road injury.

National road safety strategies are in place in all IRTAD member and observer countries. An overview of national strategies and targets as well as those currently in place at an international level is provided in Table 4. Detailed information on national policies is given in the countrychapters available online.