Road safety determinants: do political institutions matter?

Abstract

In 2010 the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 64/255 declaring 2011-2020 the Decade of Action for Road Safety with the main goal of stabilizing and then reducing the level of road traffic fatalities (United Nations, 2010). Support for this action from the world's governments reflects the growing awareness that road traffic accidents and fatalities constitute a global public health problem. In short, the fact that 1.24 million people lost their lives on the roads in 2010 (World Health Organization [WHO], 2013a) and that traffic injuries were the eighth leading cause of death globally (Lozano et al., 2012) can no longer be overlooked.