Miles away or just around the corner? Systems thinking in road safety research and practice

摘要

The facts around current and projected levels of road trauma need little introduction: in 2012 road injury was the ninth leading cause of worldwide deaths (WHO, 2014) and it is estimated that by 2030 it will be the fifth (WHO, 2009). Its presence in the World Health Organisation's top ten causes of death gives a clear indication of the scale of the problem: currently road injury stands alone within this list as the only non-disease-related issue. The inescapable truth is that road transport systems kill people on a scale that is comparable to cancers, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory diseases.