'Of all modes of transport, transport by road is the most hazardous and the most costly in terms of human lives' is a citation from the EC White paper on European transport policy (EC, 2001; http://europa.eu.int/comm/transport/index_en.html). Moreover road transport crashes are expensive in terms of related socio-economic costs, and European citizens consider road safety as a topic of major concern.

Table 1 gives an overview of the road safety background in the SUN+6 countries, Japan, Australia and the USA in terms of population, number of motor vehicles, kilometrage of all motor vehicles and annual road traffic fatalities.

Table 1: Road safety background information in the SUN+6 countries, Japan, Australia and the USA: source IRTAD (standard reference year = 2002, ^* = 2000 ), complemented with individual country/region data (2002); NA = not available