Marking the 8th UN Global Road Safety Week

Walking and cycling provide health, environmental, and social benefits—but only if people feel safe doing them. Road Safety week presents a timely opportunity to reaffirm the importance of road safety, with a particular emphasis on pedestrians and cyclists who are among the most vulnerable road users. At the centre of any successful road safety strategy must lie comprehensive collision investigation and robust data analysis, tools which are essential for understanding why crashes happen and, crucially, how to prevent them. 

Understanding the Problem: The Human Toll of Road Collisions

At the 4th Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Marrakech, I presented the lessons learned from our projects across a spectrum of contexts—from high-data environments like the UK, to low-data contexts where innovation is required to draw meaningful conclusions. I was pleased to present how combining diverse data sources can often reveal patterns without requiring intensive manual processing, providing evidence-based interventions even in challenging settings. I also explained the importance of action and how we should not seek perfection when it comes to road safety data.

During the Conference, Meera Naran MBE spoke with powerful honesty about the death of her son on a UK motorway. Her story was striking. It was a reminder that even in countries with sophisticated data collection, over 1,000 people die every year on British roads.

A knock at the door from a police officer is an event that changes lives forever. Behind every statistic is a person—a son, daughter, partner, or friend—whose death or serious injury has a profound ripple effect across families, communities, and institutions. Less often thought of is the loss to the economy from the lost lives of those who may have contributed in great ways, only for it to be ended prematurely because of a road crash. For those left behind, the aftermath is a maze of police processes, legal proceedings, and grief. Improving safety for pedestrians and cyclists is not only about building segregated lanes or updating regulations. It begins with recognising the causes of collisions, addressing them at the source, and using evidence to implement systemic change.

We know what works. We just need to do it.

Investigating crashes, preventing harm

When a serious road crash occurs, police investigators must determine if a criminal offence has taken place. In the most severe or complex cases, a Forensic Collision Investigator is called upon to reconstruct the incident using physical evidence, data analysis, and scientific reasoning. This process not only assists in legal proceedings, but more importantly, helps identify contributory factors, highlight systemic issues, and prevent similar incidents in the future.

Crash data analysis plays a similarly vital role. By scrutinising high-quality, multi-source data, organisations can build a more complete picture of the factors that lead to road collisions. At TRL, our IMAAP software allows public authorities and other organisations to integrate datasets, removing the need for time-consuming manual processing and enabling evidence-based decision-making to improve safety outcomes.

Global Lessons: From the UK to the rest of the world

Our work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) provides another lens through which to view road safety. In complex humanitarian settings, UNHCR vehicles are often required to operate in hazardous and poorly regulated environments. TRL is proud to be supporting UNHCR through detailed road traffic collision investigations, delivering global support through root cause analysis and safety insights. This work helps ensure that lifesaving humanitarian missions can be carried out safely and efficiently. The type of leadership shown by UNHCR in opening their operations to an independent organisation, such as TRL, is a lesson to us all in how to demonstrate a real commitment to reducing collisions.

Countries working toward improving data collection have an opportunity to draw upon the learning from other nations to speed up their reduction attempts. For example, TRL is partnering with University Hospital Southampton in a pioneering project titled Data Sustains Life, funded by the Road Safety Trust and UK Department for Transport (DfT). The initiative will link anonymised health records with road collision data—offering a holistic view of crash causes and their long-term medical consequences.

This type of project has the real potential to enable useful insights into the ongoing impact of road collisions. With nearly 30,000 people killed or seriously injured annually on British roads, and the cost to the UK economy running into the billions, this approach could transform how transport and health sectors work together to address the long-term impact of collisions. Dr Phil Martin, Head of Transport Safety at TRL, put it simply: “By linking health and road safety data, we gain insights that traditional silos have prevented. This project is a global first—and it will be a game changer”. The lessons learned from that project has the potential to inform evidence-based practices in less developed road safety systems.

Making the roads safer encourages the increased use of new methods of mobility. We know that as walking and cycling gain prominence, new forms of micromobility—such as e-scooters—rapidly grow in popularity. In partnership with WMG at the University of Warwick, TRL recently worked on a major research report for the DfT to inform the development of e-scooter regulations.

Among the recommendations:

• A new category should be created, separate from motor vehicle regulations and with limits placed on safety-critical factors; speed (15.5mph), mass (250kg laden) and acceleration (2m/s²).
• E-scooters should be allowed in seated and multi-wheel designs to improve accessibility and encourage future innovation.
• Footway use, while offering mobility benefits, must be carefully managed to avoid conflicts with pedestrians.
• Structural and stability standards should be updated to reflect real-world usage, with new performance-based testing models adopted.

Designing regulations with inclusivity and safety in mind will allow micromobility to support net-zero ambitions without compromising on pedestrian safety. This type of work offers a further opportunity to inform the way in which we all work together towards more sustainable methods of transport, whilst also maintaining or improving safety.

Conclusion: The Path Forward

The 8th UN Global Road Safety Week reminds us that safe streets are not a luxury—they are a necessity. Walking and cycling should not come with a death toll. To build safer streets, we must invest in comprehensive investigation, harness the power of data, and commit to action before the next name becomes another road safety statistic.

As a forensic collision investigator and technical lead at TRL, I, along with my colleagues, remain committed to helping partners in the UK, and across the globe turn knowledge into impact, and make the roads safer for everybody. We are proud to be supporting UN Global Road Safety Week.

About the author

Craig Arnold is the Technical Lead in the Forensic Investigations Team at TRL and for our investigations conducted on behalf of the United Nations. Craig is a Chartered Forensic Collision Investigator with over a decade specialising in road collisions. He has international casework experience involving collisions in South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Craig holds a Master’s degree where he researched enforcement-based interventions in road safety and has researched the use of big data and machine learning to reduce road collisions whilst studying for a PhD in Criminology.