Citation

Sleet DA, Baldwin GF. J. Australas. Coll. Road Saf. 2010; 21(2): 9-12.

Affiliation

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA (dds6@cdc.gov).

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Australasian College of Road Safety)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Despite the existence of many effective interventions, more than 1.3 million people worldwide die from road traffic injuries. Another 20 to 50 million suffer serious injuries. Many, if not most of these injuries are preventable. While effective interventions exist to prevent many traffic-related injuries, they are often not available or are simply not used to save lives. This is a problem of translation.

This situation is similar to developing a life-saving drug but not telling doctors about it, not packaging it for easy use by consumers, not giving it to pharmacists to dispense, and not helping people use it properly. This gap between research and practice, and between discovery and delivery, is large and continues to impede our progress in preventing and controlling injuries and violence. For maximum impact, effective road safety interventions require widespread, sustained use by a large segment of the population. These issues are the focus of this paper.