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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: CE Research Report: Road Traffic Safety, published by vicky cox on March 7, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This report is the result of Charity Entrepreneurship’s research to identify the most promising charities to start in the area of global health and development. Improving road traffic safety is one of our top ideas for 2022. A new organization operating in this space would focus heavily on policy and advocacy work in the countries where these issues are most neglected. We are currently accepting applications to our 2022 Incubation Program, through which we hope to launch this charity along with others that will focus on aid quality advocacy, postpartum family planning, tobacco taxation, and EA Meta. The 2022 Incubation Program will take place from late June to late August. The deadline to apply is March 31, 2022. We provide a 2-month, full-time, cost-covered training program (online), cash stipends to cover living expenses, considerable funding (of up to $175,000), and a wide range of ongoing support. Visit our website to learn more. The CE team is happy to answer any questions you may have about the following research report, and we welcome critical feedback and conversation. Health and Development Policy – Road Traffic Safety Author: Vicky CoxReview: Sam Hilton and Melanie BasnakDate of publication: January 2022Research period: 2021 Thanks to Zakariyau Yusuf for his assistance with the early research for this report, and to Antonia Personette and Urszula Zarosa for their contributions. We are also grateful to the experts who took the time to offer their thoughts on this research. For questions about the content of this research, please contact Vicky Cox at vicky@charityentrepreneurship.com. For questions about the research process, please contact Sam Hilton at sam@charityentrepreneurship.com Executive summary Legislation is a commonly used tool to reduce road traffic injuries and fatalities in high-income countries. However, legislation is often lacking in low- and middle-income countries and, as a result, these countries disproportionately bear the global burden of road-related injuries and deaths. We evaluated legislation across 5 key risk areas – speeding, drink-driving, helmet use, seat belt use, and child restraint use – and found that speed limits and seat belt legislation look to be the most promising . Therefore, this report will focus on speeding, speed limits, and seat belt use (both improving existing seat belt legislation to ensure it extends to all occupants and introducing new legislation in countries where it is currently non-existent). There is strong evidence that speed is a key risk factor in road traffic injuries and fatalities, and that speed limits can reduce speeding. A meta-analysis of 98 studies explored the relationship between average speed and the incidence of road-related injuries and fatalities and created a formula that can be used to calculate the expected reduction in injuries/fatalities as a result of a change in speed (as the expected effectiveness depends on the speed before and after). For example, when speed is reduced from 100 km/h to 90 km/h, the number of fatal accidents is reduced by 34.4%. A meta-analysis of 51 studies found that speed limits reduce average speeds by 25% of the change in speed limit . There is also strong evidence that seat belt use reduces road-related injuries and deaths. A meta-analysis of 30 studies found that wearing a seat belt can reduce fatalities among front-seat occupants by 40-50% and among rear-seat occupants by up to 25%. Moreover, there is good evidence that advocacy leads to policy change. Looking at 84 case studies of advocacy in this space across the globe, we found an average success rate of ~48%, with 40 of 84 campaigns resulting in policy change in an average of 2.6 years. Ma...