INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN TRAFFIC SAFETY

Cooperation in traffic safety among the industrial countries of Europe, North America and Japan becomes increasingly possible owing to the trend towards homogeneity and road to systems and in their use. In research, and immediately available area for cooperation is in the collection, comparison and interpretation of statistical information. It will be especially useful to compile a database showing year-by-year trends and safety variables, together with parameters which have been shown to be closely related to safety effects. An international tabulation would permit the testing of various hypotheses, such as "Smeed's formula" and "Jorgensen's conjecture", and it in this way help understand more systematically factors influencing the trends in traffic safety which accompany the development of motorization. International cooperation can also be useful in the application of traffic safety knowledge. The industrialized nations should consider the advantages of incorporating traffic safety into their programs of technical aid to developing countries. Although medical projects may be needed more at the earliest stages of development, traffic safety projects take on increased importance when the countries are urbanized and beginning to industrialized. This transitional stage is often accompanied by a sudden increase in public awareness of the importance of accidents as a threat to public health. The experience of industrialized countries with design, implementation and evaluation of traffic safety measures can be especially useful at this stage, both in avoiding projects of doubtful cost-effectiveness and in creating an appropriate institutional structure to deal with this growing hazard to public health.