In many countries around the world, deficiencies in data or data quality impair evidence-based road safety policy making. While many countries collect road safety data, the collection is not necessarily comprehensive. Further, many countries can be unaware of data gaps in their system, which prevents them from soundly analyzing their road safety problems. Therefore, road safety data definitions and collection methods must converge into standard international criteria, thus allowing for comparisons in space - across countries - and in time. This is the raison d'etre of regional road safety observatories, which have been developed, for example, in Latin America (OISEVI), Africa (ARSO), and Asia-Pacific (APRSO). They present an opportunity for joint regional efforts to improve, in a harmonized way, road safety data collection and analysis. Regional road safety observatories promote the adoption of a common set of road safety indicators based on common definitions and serve as an avenue to assist countries in improving the management of their crash data systems.

The Canadian Guide to In-service Road Safety Reviews is a practical guide for conducting reviews on existing roads, based on the current experience and expertise in Canada and internationally. A companion guide to TAC's Canadian Road Safety Audit Guide, this publication provides guidelines to traffic practitioners on how to upgrade the operational and physical characteristics of existing in-service roads to be more compatible with current traffic conditions and safety knowledge.

"The Global status report on road safety 2015, reflecting information from 180 countries, indicates that worldwide the total number of road traffic deaths has plateaued at 1.25 million per year, with the highest road traffic fatality rates in low-income countries. In the last three years, 17 countries have aligned at least one of their laws with best practice on seat-belts, drink-driving, speed, motorcycle helmets or child restraints. While there has been progress towards improving road safety legislation and in making vehicles safer, the report shows that the pace of change is too slow. Urgent action is needed to achieve the ambitious target for road safety reflected in the newly adopted 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: halving the global number of deaths and injuries from road traffic crashes by 2020. Made possible through funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, this report is the third in the series, and provides a snapshot of the road safety situation globally, highlighting the gaps and the measures needed to best drive progress."--Publisher's description.

This Transportation Research Record contains 28 papers dealing with statistical methods in highway safety research; highway safety data, analysis, and evaluation; occupant protection; and systematic reviews and meta-analysis. The papers address such topics as risk and crash prediction models, crashes on freeways and at signalized intersections, multivehicle crash prediction, speed and safety, red light running crashes, freeway lane closures, ramp design, accident exposure, rumble strip benefits, collisions with median trees, intersection safety, accident reconstruction, safety effects of speed limit changes, geometric design and head-on crashes, deer-vehicle crashes, sport utility vehicle rollover, vehicle occupancy and crash risk, a logit model for studying injury severity, abdominal injuries in rail passengers, healthy transport policies, and meta-analysis.