Every day thousands of people are killed and injured on our roads. Millions of people each year will spend long weeks in the hospital after severe crashes and many will never be able to live, work or play as they used to do. Current efforts to address road safety are minimal in comparison to this growing human suffering. This report presents a comprehensive overview of what is known about the magnitude, risk factors and impact of road traffic injuries, and about ways to prevent and lessen the impact of road crashes. Over 100 experts, from all continents and different sectors -- including transport, engineering, health, police, education and civil society -- have worked to produce the report. Charts and tables.

Increasing seat belt use is one of the most effective and least costly ways of reducing the lives lost and injuries incurred on the nation's highways each year, yet about one in four drivers and front-seat passengers continues to ride unbuckled. The Transportation Research Board, in response to a congressional request for a study to examine the potential of in-vehicle technologies to increase belt use, formed a panel of 12 experts having expertise in the areas of automotive engineering, design, and regulation; traffic safety and injury prevention; human factors; survey research methods; economics; and technology education and consumer interest. This panel, named the Committee for the Safety Belt Technology Study, examined the potential benefits of technologies designed to increase belt use, determined how drivers view the acceptability of the technologies, and considered whether legislative or regulatory actions are necessary to enable their installation on passenger vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the study sponsor, funded and conducted interviews and focus groups of samples of different belt user groups to learn more about the potential effectiveness and acceptability of technologies ranging from seat belt reminder systems to more aggressive interlock systems, and provided the information collected to the study committee. The committee also supplemented its expertise by holding its second meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, where it met in proprietary sessions with several of the major automobile manufacturers, a key supplier, and a small business inventor of a shifter interlock system to learn of planned new seat belt use technologies as well as about company data concerning their effectiveness and acceptability. The committee's findings and recommendations are presented in this five-chapter report.

Child injuries are largely absent from child survival initiatives presently on the global agenda. Through this report, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund and many partners have set out to elevate child injury to a priority for the global public health and development communities. It should be seen as a complement to the UN Secretary-General's study on violence against children released in late 2006 (that report addressed violence-related or intentional injuries). Both reports suggest that child injury and violence prevention programs need to be integrated into child survival and other broad strategies focused on improving the lives of children. Evidence demonstrates the dramatic successes in child injury prevention in countries which have made a concerted effort. These results make a case for increasing investments in human resources and institutional capacities. Implementing proven interventions could save more than a thousand children's lives a day.--p. vii.

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