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Road Safety in the People’s Republic of China

Background

Road accidents are a human tragedy that result in health, environmental and social problems, and have significant impacts on national economic growth strategies.

In recognition of this, the United Nations (UN) has recently integrated road safety into its policies on sustainable development. In April 2004, for the first time, a UN General Assembly plenary session addressed road safety and called on member states to stimulate a new level of commitment and an urgent response to improve road safety. The World Health Organization (WHO) forecasts that road accidents will move from the ninth to the third most serious health problem facing the world, within the next 10 years.

The problem of road safety is acute in the Asia-Pacific region, which has only around 18% of the world’s motorized vehicle fleet but accounts for around 50% of global road deaths. The estimated economic loss to the region from road traffic accidents is over $35 billion per annum. Around 40 million in-patient days are taken up in the regions’ hospitals each year with road accident victims.

In the PRC, rapid economic growth during the past decade, averaging around 10% per annum, has altered road transport demand, which has risen faster than that for other transport modes, creating a huge demand for more road space. Given the PRC's rapid economic growth, low vehicle ownership rates, lower car prices as tariff barriers fell after World Trade Organization (WTO) accession, and increasing access to loans to finance automobile purchases, the vehicle fleet is expected to continue to grow rapidly in the coming years.

Rapid development and increasing vehicular growth in the PRC have resulted in a substantial increase in road accidents and loss of life. During 2000–2004, over 500,000 people were killed and around 2.6 million injured in road accidents, equivalent to 1 fatality every 5 minutes—the highest in the world. The situation will likely deteriorate unless urgent and effective action is taken to help the PRC make its roads safer.

The road subsector is the largest area in ADB's PRC operations, accounting for about 60% of the portfolio, and roads are likely to remain a significant part of ADB's future program. ADB’s operational strategy for the road subsector is designed to remove infrastructure constraints and support policy and institutional reforms. ADB gives high priority to road safety in its efforts to improve the way the road network is operated and used, help eliminate loss of lives, and promote poverty reduction and economic development.

Impacts

The extent of adverse impacts of road accidents on the economy is characterized as follows:

• Economic losses from road traffic accidents are 1–3% of the PRC’s gross domestic product (GDP) per annum (footnote 3)—higher than the national budget for public health services, and the national budget for rural compulsory education.
• In the PRC, road accidents disproportionately harm low-income groups (over 60%) such as pedestrians, bicycle and motorcycle riders, and long-distance bus users. When household heads are killed or disabled, their family’s poverty worsens.
• Road accident costs have a significant adverse impact on the PRC Government’s fight against poverty, and on the scarce medical resources. Road injury patients represent over 25% of hospital bed occupancy.
• Increasing accidents create a burden on the scarce resources of road agencies.

Constraints

Issues and constraints that contribute to road safety problems include the following:

• Lack of knowledge of basic traffic rules accounts for over 48% of all accidents. Many of these accidents involve freight vehicles and long-distance buses.
• Limited skills and resources of the driving license examiners.
• Unavailability of a reliable accident investigation and data system, and in-depth research needed to fully understand causes and create effective countermeasures.
• Road safety management practices are characterized by a lack of overall goal-orientation and performance evaluation, fragmented safety interventions, and limited road safety expertise, resources, and interagency coordination between the different agencies that are responsible for different parts of the road network.

ADB Support

To address these constraints, ADB has previously provided an advisory TA to help the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), which is the lead road safety agency in the PRC. This TA developed a focused, interagency, and multidimensional program—the National Road Safety Reform Program (NRSRP)—to address various road safety problems. The TA was assessed as highly successful.

The NRSRP has identified major road safety obstacles, characteristics of the problem, role of each agency, and included ten key components to address various road safety problems in the PRC, namely interagency coordination, engineering, enforcement, legislation, education, community awareness, driver licensing, emergency services, health care, and funding issues.

The Government and MPS are highly committed to implement the NRSRP. They have implemented two key components of the NRSRP, namely

1. establishment of the first national interagency road safety committee in September 2003 to enhance coordination and optimize the use of resources, under the leadership of the MPS and with the membership of 17 key ministries, including the Ministries of Communications, Construction, Health, Education, Finance, and Agriculture
2. introduction of the first comprehensive road and traffic safety law in May 2004

However, more work is required to achieve the objectives of the NRSRP.

Find out more about ADB’s transport activities in the PRC.

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