New Speed Management Manual aims to curb dangerous speeding on the world’s roads

The World Bank, together with the World Health Organization and other partners, have launched a revised manual to help curb the scourge of road traffic deaths and injuries through managing speed on the world’s roads.

The second edition of the Speed Management Manual includes new case studies, data and guidance for decision-makers on setting and enforcing speed limits, modifying roads to reduce speed, making use of in-vehicle technologies, raising awareness of the dangers of speeding and tracking the impact of policies and actions. It urges countries to develop a comprehensive and integrated set of policies based on thorough assessments of their own unique contexts. 

“We’ve known that speed kills for decades, yet there is still much work to do to convince policy-makers and the public of the huge risks posed by speeding. This is especially true for areas with high numbers of pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users,” said Dr Matts-Ake Belin, Global Lead for the UN Decade for Action for Road Safety 2021-2030 at WHO. 

Managing speed is key to improving road safety. The speed at which a vehicle travels directly influences the risk of a crash, the severity of injuries received and the chance of death. With a focus on low and middle-income countries, where nine in ten deaths occur, the revised manual calls for countries to adopt the safe system approach to road safety, which puts people and safety, not vehicles, at the core of mobility systems, with speed management as a key feature.

"Speed is the top contributing factor to the severity of road crashes, so it's at the heart of the road safety problem. The new edition of the Speed Management Manual has been designed in a practical way to help officials and road safety practitioners better manage traffic speeds," said Alina F. Burlacu, Senior Transport Specialist at the World Bank and co-author of the manual.

The launch of the manual comes as WHO gears up to launch the Global Status Report on Road Safety 2023 that will detail the scale of road traffic deaths, and global progress in advancing laws, strategies and policies to reduce them.

The Speed Management Manual is part of a series of manuals that are co-produced by WHO, the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP), the FIA Foundation and the World Bank, with financial support from Bloomberg Philanthropies.