The EBRD approach to road safety

In addition to that, as many as 50 million people are injured or disabled by road traffic crashes every year.The majority of road traffic deaths and injuries affect people in low and middle-income countries – where roads are often in poor repair usually as a result of decades of underinvestment – which are many of the countries where the EBRD works. Road traffic accidents cost countries up to 4 per cent of their Gross National Product every year. To say nothing of the immeasurable human loss and suffering.The costs, both socially and economically, are too great to ignore. Road accidents are not inevitable – they can be prevented through investing in better roads, reducing risks and community awareness and education.That’s why we at the EBRD are working harder than ever to make roads safer.

The EBRD has committed over €7.5 billion into more than 90 road projects since 1991 and road and traffic safety is embedded into the Bank’s Environmental and Social Policy under Performance Requirement (PR) 4 – Health and Safety.

This requires all projects to identify, assess and monitor the potential traffic and road safety risks to workers and affected communities, as well as implementing measures to control any risks. We also require any road project we invest in to take into consideration relevant EU road and traffic safety management standards.

Projects will undergo road safety audits to identify road safety measures and incorporate technically road safety measure into the road design to mitigate potential road safety impacts on all road users – motorised and non-motorised.

Roads are routinely monitored and incident and accident reports to identify and resolve problems or negative safety trends.

Projects associated with vehicles fleets (owned or leased) will ensure good standards of road safety management to minimise risks to the public and workers.

Of all fatal accidents reported to the Bank in 2017, 11 per cent were due to vehicle collisions. The most common vehicle collisions occur with workers travelling to and from meetings and workplaces, but they also involve public transport. There are also many collisions with trains at level crossings.

The EBRD also has its own Transport Strategy which addresses transport sustainability at policy and project level. The Bank is committed to supporting the development of sustainable transport networks in the region and is a signatory of the joint IFI statement issued at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012.

The EBRD’s commitment to safe and sustainable transport is in alignment with the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 as well as Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 11.

The EBRD has been working with other multilateral development banks (MDBs) since 2009 on a common approach to road safety issues, with the aim of jointly leveraging our country and regional road safety programmes to help accelerate knowledge transfer, strengthen institutional capacity and scale up road safety investment.The MDB Road Safety Initiative will put into action our comprehensive Joint Statement that we issued prior to the First Global Ministerial Conference on Global Road Safety in November 2009, to announce our partnership to address the growing public health crisis arising from deaths and injuries on the roads of low and middle-income countries. It will provide a harmonised platform that our client countries and regions and their road safety partners can turn to for sustained support, guidance and exchange of information on good practices.

It is not just human factors, such as speeding, not wearing seatbelts or careless driving, that increase the risk of a crash occurring. Poor road design, poorly executed roads and inadequate road maintenance can also cause crashes and increase the severity of injury.

Roads need to be designed with the needs of all road users in mind – including pedestrians, non-motorised road users and local communities and businesses (e.g. farmers who need to cross with livestock or women and children).

Roads should assist road users to keep safe – encouraging safe speeds, ensuring good visibility, providing warnings to drivers of potential hazards. A ‘forgiving road’ can assist safe road user behaviour and prevent or reduce injuries

Road design standards are quite outdated in many of the countries where the EBRD works, coupled with a lack of engineering knowledge in international best practice, safe road design and the overall process, including blackspot management, road safety audits or inspection requirements. We have been actively working in countries such as Kazakhstan and Tajikistan to train engineers and academics on international best practice and EU safety requirements.

Funding for road safety activities is often limited due to economic constraints. Thanks to the generous support of our donors, the EBRD has been able to support priority countries via the Bank’s Shareholders Special Fund (SSF). Generally we are achieving around 75 per cent of recommendations in road safety audits being implemented into the final detailed design of road projects.

In many public and private organisations, driving is one of the most hazardous activities that employees are requested to undertake. It is estimated that road traffic collisions whilst at work are the single largest cause of occupational fatalities in the UK and company vehicle drivers are 49 per cent more likely to be involved in an accident than the ordinary driver.

There are many issues which place occupational drivers at greater risk of collisions compared to the ordinary driver ( such as long driving hours resulting in fatigue) but many organisations accept road traffic collisions as a part of their business undertaking and feel it is something they have very little control over.

The EBRD has monitored road traffic collision rates on project investments for a number of years and has identified that many low to middle income countries have large fleets of vehicles, including public transport vehicles, which have limited arrangements in place for managing occupational road risks (ORR).

We have increased our review on project investments to confirm how occupational road risks are being managed. We assess the types of vehicles being driven, policies and procedures in place, the types of journeys carried out, driver fitness and vehicle collision rates.

We encourage the development of formal traffic and road safety managements systems that align with ISO 39001 – we are working with Tbilisi Buses to implement this in near future. And we share tools and resources with other development banks and raising awareness of these risks with other development banks and export credit agencies.

Effective stakeholder engagement can reduce road risk by ensuring that all community needs - such as the needs of women or of vulnerable road users - are considered in all stages of road projects. There is a need, too, to prepare local communities for impending changes to roads (for example, higher speeds or changes in road layout). Civil society organisations can greatly assist with raising awareness of road risk. The most effective police enforcement campaigns are conducted working hand in hand with civil society partners, improving public acceptance for safety enforcement. Indeed, making projects and policies more responsive requires a systemic approach so as to ensure road safety for all. The EBRD has worked extensively with education authorities and transport departments in the countries where we work to promote local awareness of traffic rules and safer choices, such as seatbelt use.

The Bank has worked with our partners EASST on the pioneering ‘Safe Villages’ campaign to promote road safety in rural areas of Kazakhstan, where children are among the most vulnerable road users. We supported the translation of their Road Safety Education packs for children into Russian and Kazakh, as well as a public awareness-raising exercise in Aktobe Nazarbaev Public Park, which involved the staff of the regional juvenile police, Aktobe City Police and a local road safety NGO, targeting young people and parents of small children on the issue of pedestrian safety. The Safe Villages campaign is part of an initiative launched as part of the EBRD’s South West Corridor Road Rehabilitation project.