The Nonlinear Library EA - Road safety: Landscape of the problem and routes to effective policy advocacy by Rethink Priorities
Nov 29, 2023
10:00
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Road safety: Landscape of the problem and routes to effective policy advocacy, published by Rethink Priorities on November 29, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Editorial note
This report was produced by Rethink Priorities between May and July 2023. The project was commissioned and supported by Open Philanthropy, which does not necessarily endorse our conclusions.
This report builds on a short investigation conducted by Open Philanthropy in 2022, which found that previous philanthropic work on road safety looked potentially cost-effective. This report extends that analysis through in-depth case studies, expert interviews, cost-effectiveness modeling, and research into risk factors, the funding landscape, and promising interventions.
We have tried to flag major sources of uncertainty in the report, and are open to revising our views based on new information or further research.
Key takeaways
Executive Summary
According to the 2019 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, there were about 1.2 million deaths due to road injuries in 2019. About 90% of these take place in LMICs, and the majority of those killed are between 15 - 50 years old. Additionally, WHO analysis and expert interviews indicate that road safety laws in many LMICs do not meet best-practice.[1] While there is limited information about what risk factors contribute most to the road safety burden, or what laws are most important to pass, the available evidence points to speed on the roads as most risky, followed by drunk driving.
We conducted case studies of key time periods in China and Vietnam to better understand the relative impact of (philanthropically-funded) policy changes versus other factors. Our assessment of China is that we think Bloomberg's implementing partners contributed minimally to the key drunk driving policy change in 2011, and we think it's likely that this law was only one of many drivers to reduce burden.
In contrast, we think laws were a more important driving force in Vietnam, and advocacy by Bloomberg, the Asia Injury Prevention Foundation and others significantly sped up their introduction. We did not find any sources that gave insight into drivers on a global scale.
Regarding future burden, it's likely that this will follow trends in motorization. Self-driving cars may mitigate burden as they become more common; one source estimates they could constitute 20% of the global market by 2040, though we expect this to be lower in LMICs.
This report builds on a short unpublished investigation conducted by Open Philanthropy in 2022. A quick BOTEC from that report, based on an existing impact evaluation (Hendrie et al., 2021), suggested that Bloomberg's road safety initiative might be quite cost-effective enough (ROI: ~1,100x). This report extends that analysis by reviewing Hendrie et al.'s estimates of lives saved, and comparing the authors' estimates for China and Vietnam to data on road outcomes from multiple sources.
For China, we found that while the data shows reduced fatalities after 2011, we could not link them specifically to fewer incidents of drunk driving. For Vietnam, quantitative evidence for the impact of the helmet laws was stronger than for the drunk driving laws. As can be seen in our BOTEC, this analysis led us to reduce the estimated effectiveness of policy changes by 40% - 80%.
In addition, we used our case studies to estimate specific speed up parameters for advocacy of 0.4 years in China and 3.8 years in Vietnam, versus the 10 years used previously. These changes significantly reduce our estimate of lives saved to 17% of Open Philanthropy's previous estimate. If we use the same methodology as the previous estimate (i.e., divide this estimate by 259 million USD, the entirety of Bloomberg's spending between 2007 - 2020), then the ROI drops to 148x.
However, we propo...
Editorial note
This report was produced by Rethink Priorities between May and July 2023. The project was commissioned and supported by Open Philanthropy, which does not necessarily endorse our conclusions.
This report builds on a short investigation conducted by Open Philanthropy in 2022, which found that previous philanthropic work on road safety looked potentially cost-effective. This report extends that analysis through in-depth case studies, expert interviews, cost-effectiveness modeling, and research into risk factors, the funding landscape, and promising interventions.
We have tried to flag major sources of uncertainty in the report, and are open to revising our views based on new information or further research.
Key takeaways
Executive Summary
According to the 2019 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, there were about 1.2 million deaths due to road injuries in 2019. About 90% of these take place in LMICs, and the majority of those killed are between 15 - 50 years old. Additionally, WHO analysis and expert interviews indicate that road safety laws in many LMICs do not meet best-practice.[1] While there is limited information about what risk factors contribute most to the road safety burden, or what laws are most important to pass, the available evidence points to speed on the roads as most risky, followed by drunk driving.
We conducted case studies of key time periods in China and Vietnam to better understand the relative impact of (philanthropically-funded) policy changes versus other factors. Our assessment of China is that we think Bloomberg's implementing partners contributed minimally to the key drunk driving policy change in 2011, and we think it's likely that this law was only one of many drivers to reduce burden.
In contrast, we think laws were a more important driving force in Vietnam, and advocacy by Bloomberg, the Asia Injury Prevention Foundation and others significantly sped up their introduction. We did not find any sources that gave insight into drivers on a global scale.
Regarding future burden, it's likely that this will follow trends in motorization. Self-driving cars may mitigate burden as they become more common; one source estimates they could constitute 20% of the global market by 2040, though we expect this to be lower in LMICs.
This report builds on a short unpublished investigation conducted by Open Philanthropy in 2022. A quick BOTEC from that report, based on an existing impact evaluation (Hendrie et al., 2021), suggested that Bloomberg's road safety initiative might be quite cost-effective enough (ROI: ~1,100x). This report extends that analysis by reviewing Hendrie et al.'s estimates of lives saved, and comparing the authors' estimates for China and Vietnam to data on road outcomes from multiple sources.
For China, we found that while the data shows reduced fatalities after 2011, we could not link them specifically to fewer incidents of drunk driving. For Vietnam, quantitative evidence for the impact of the helmet laws was stronger than for the drunk driving laws. As can be seen in our BOTEC, this analysis led us to reduce the estimated effectiveness of policy changes by 40% - 80%.
In addition, we used our case studies to estimate specific speed up parameters for advocacy of 0.4 years in China and 3.8 years in Vietnam, versus the 10 years used previously. These changes significantly reduce our estimate of lives saved to 17% of Open Philanthropy's previous estimate. If we use the same methodology as the previous estimate (i.e., divide this estimate by 259 million USD, the entirety of Bloomberg's spending between 2007 - 2020), then the ROI drops to 148x.
However, we propo...