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During the global pandemic, an international road safety on-line collaboration between Australia and Cambodia was initiated to design, develop and deliver a virtual training course in June/July 2021. Ten highly experienced Australian and Cambodian road safety practitioners voluntarily combined with the enthusiasm and dedication of 53 committed Cambodian young peer influencers to achieve highly productive results. In the month following the training sessions, the youth syndicates produced promotional leaflets, banners, infographics and 10 short videos to deliver tailored messages to over 26,000 community members in villages and cities in Cambodia. The communications media included Facebook and TikTok as well as workshops and direct messaging at vaccination points. This program epitomises what can be achieved with the goodwill of road safety professionals using an international network to combine with enthusiastic, dedicated and committed youth peer influencers, all within a framework of voluntary community services. Actions, outcomes and the impact of this knowledge-transfer and youth empowerment initiative is presented as an example of a successful road safety intervention.

Professional road crash investigation, complemented by intelligent analysis and dynamic actions provide the foundation for road safety reform. However, to date, the real potential resulting from police investigative findings have not been fully realised due to the lack of streamlined connectivity from the crash scene to the reform process. Such deficiencies include inadequate investigations, inadequate data management, convoluted processes, system delays, inadequate analysis and limited immediate and mid-term actions which should be generated following thorough and efficient investigations. A review of processes across high, medium and low-income countries has identified a more effective approach to achieving results in road safety reform across all road safety disciplines. The simple AAA framework to ‘Acquire, Analyse and Action’ is presented as a contemporary model to ensure an evidence-based foundation drives road safety reform to identify root cause analysis locally, nationally and globally. This provides structure, discipline and purpose as well as technical skill and competence to achieve practical recommendations as preventative measures for crash reduction. A multi-disciplined expert review team to validate/assess/modify these recommendations in serious crashes ensures constructive countermeasures are prioritised and actioned. This facilitates a paradigm shift in thinking and analysis to achieve a continuous improvement process designed to reduce road trauma and save lives.

Road traffic crashes are among the leading causes of death and disability in the world, particularly in low and middle-income countries. This study aimed at to conduct a social marketing formative research to inform the development of a campaign to manage driving speed on the intercity roads of Iran.To carry out the social marketing formative research, a qualitative and quantitative study were conducted. Also, a literature review of the speed management strategies was carried out and an analysis of traffic accident data and speeding violations was performed in selected provinces during 2019 and 2020.Based on the findings of the qualitative study, perceived sense of lack of speed control, poor monitoring system, and law enforcement are the main reasons drivers exceed the speed limit. They mostly suggest using punitive levers and more stringent law enforcement practices for speed management. Literature reviews also confirm that to successfully develop an effective speed management plan a set of measures should be implemented together, including road safety engineering, raising awareness, social marketing strategies, and finally strict law enforcement. The overriding findings of the formative research revealed that to persuade Iranian drivers to respect the speed limit, the messages of the campaign should focus on strict law enforcement in the selected corridors.In the minds of the Iranian audience, strict law enforcement is of paramount importance for a speed management strategy to work; hence it should be taken into consideration when tailoring the campaign messages. From the findings of the present study, it can be concluded that to manage speed on intercity routes in Iran, a social marketing campaign is needed to encourage compliance with speed limits.

Worldwide, every year 1.35 million people die due to road traffic injuries (Global Traffic Safety Report 2018). Road traffic injuries are now the leading cause of death for children and young people (5-29 years old), as reported by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The ‘Decade of Action’ for road safety (2011-2020) was a universal start to save millions of lives by taking a multi-disciplinary collaboration approach for road safety management. It encouraged countries to have safe road infrastructures, safe vehicles, safety-enhanced user behavior and improved road-injury related health services. All countries were encouraged to join this movement to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The ‘Safe Community’ program is a framework to employ local resources and public participation to improve the community safety and the empowerment of the population which will lead to SDGs. So, there is great potential for local communities to improve the safety of their people. Now, in the last year of the Decade of Action for road safety, we have an opportunity to review our achievements, strengths and weaknesses, and future needs so we can develop an action plan for the second decade that will be more equitable and evidence-based considering the local characteristics. The 24th International Conference on Safe Community gathers us to discuss and share our experiences and scientific achievements. Sharing and learning from other safe communities about road safety improvements provides a great example for local communities to employ a bottom-up approach to prevent road trauma due to road traffic injuries.