Session Description
Road traffic injuries are one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide, and a major public health challenge. Their effects extend well beyond health: they disrupt livelihoods, economic productivity, education, access to healthcare, and the resilience of rural communities, which are disproportionately affected along with economically active adults.
Despite this burden, road safety is consistently underassessed in impact assessment. Safety reviews tend to be triggered by projects that are visibly transport-related (a new road, a port, a rail line), rather than by the transport risk that almost any project generates during both construction and operation. An agribusiness moving produce to market, a plant with daily worker shuttles, an extractive operation with haul routes through villages, even an education programme with outreach vehicles, each introduces workers and vehicles onto roads and increases community exposure to associated risks. In spite of this, road safety may be scoped into E&SHIAs that govern these projects, but with a narrow definition of risks to be addressed, focusing more on the engineering side of the project and what the project proponent can actually control. But road safety escapes this narrow approach as public roads belong to everybody and strict control is not enforceable unilaterally.
This session, drawing primarily on IFC PS 4, investigates how road safety can be addressed as a cross-cutting risk in impact assessment generally, and as a shared responsibility among developers, contractors, governments, financiers, and communities and it will bring together practitioners, lenders, and project developers across sectors.
Session Summary
Road safety is systematically underassessed in impact assessment, not only for infrastructure, but across virtually any project generating traffic exposure. Drawing on IFC PS 4, this session examines road safety as a shared, cross-sectoral responsibility and proposes a practical framework for assessing it consistently.
Session Chair
Francesca Viliani
Fraviliconsult
Denmark
Session Co-chair
Susan Joyce
On Common Ground Consultants Inc.
Canada