Road traffic mortality in Russia: definitions, trends and perspectives

In 2016, the crude death rate from road traffic accidents in Russia decreased, according to police data, to a level not observed since 1971, after which it continued to decline. The positive trends apparently served as the basis for the optimistic goals laid down in the Road Safety Strategy for 2018-2024. Based on police data, vital statistics on mortality and international databases on mortality and road safety, the authors try to answer these questions: Are the goals set achievable within the specified timeframe, and how consistent are they with European trends in road traffic mortality, as well as with Russia's present differentiation of road traffic mortality by space, age and category of road users? The study showed that the deadlines for achieving targets in the Road Safety Strategy are very tight. Today, only large and medium-sized cities have the potential to implement a new Road Safety Strategy in which the crude death rate should not exceed 1.5-2 deaths per 100 thousand people by 2024, whereas in small cities and rural settlements - 2.5-3 deaths per 100 thousand people. For many years, the main risk groups have been drivers and passengers aged 15-44 and pedestrians over 60 years old, who do not appear in the Road Safety Strategy as priority categories. In addition, the article shows that in order to eliminate the existing discrepancies between the numbers of deaths published by the two official reporting systems (the police and Rosstat), the very first step might be for Rosstat to stop calculating the number of road traffic deaths based on the current version of the abridged classification of causes of death and transition to one of the two international approaches for aggregating three-digit codes of causes of death used by the WHO.