Better Safety Data for Better Road Safety Outcomes

The IRTAD Group has the objective to progressively include more countries in the group and the database, while attaching high priority to the quality of data. High quality data is essential to conducting sound research and analysis in support effective road safety strategies.

Since 2008 IRTAD has been engaged in a series of twinning projects to assist non- member countries in improving their national crash data systems. The successful twinning between Argentina and Spain led to the desire for broader co-operation on road safety data in Latin America under the umbrella of the Ibero-American Road Safety Observatory (OISEVI), created in 2011.

OISEVI was established by the directors for road safety from 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries with a remit to share information on best practices concerning policymaking, planning and road safety indicators. For the development of indicators it is supported by the IRTAD LAC database, a new safety database with a Spanish interface, in development on the model of the IRTAD database.

IRTAD has a long standing tradition of organising international conferences (Helsinki in 1995, Vienna in 2000, Brno in 2006, Seoul in 2009), open to a wide audience in order to share its experience in safety data collection and analysis and learn from initiatives of others in the use of data for shaping road safety policies and interventions.

This Conference was the first Joint event between IRTAD and OISEVI. It focused on data improvement and quality as the best ally in the development of road safety strategies. The Conference provided an opportunity to present research papers and to exchange ideas and views.