LONDON -- Every time the Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll has asked people around the world to name the biggest risk to their safety, the No. 1 answer has been the same: road accidents.
The World Risk Poll is the first and only global, nationally representative study of worry about, and harm from, risks to people's safety. The poll is based on nearly 147,000 interviews conducted by Gallup in 142 countries and areas throughout 2023 and covers places with little to no official data on safety and risk.
In 2023, 16% of adults worldwide named road-related accidents as the greatest source of risk in their life; fewer mentioned other risks such as crime and violence (13%) and personal health conditions (11%). This figure is broadly in line with previous years: 16% mentioned road accidents in 2019, and 13% mentioned them in 2021.
Perceptions of the risk that road accidents pose vary significantly around the world. People living in high-income economies are more than twice as likely to cite road accidents as the top risk to their safety as those in low-income economies (21% vs. 9%, respectively), even though those in high-income economies are least at risk of dying on the roads.
The World Health Organization estimates that the road traffic death rate is 28.3 per 100,000 people in low-income countries, more than three times the rate in high-income countries (8.4 per 100,000).
The World Risk Poll also asks people directly how worried they are about seven specific risks. Again, road accidents stand out. Over three in four adults worldwide (76%) say they are very or somewhat worried about being harmed in a road accident, a higher level of worry than what they express about risks related to severe weather events, violent crime, food safety, mental health, work or drinking water.
Global levels of worry about being seriously harmed on the roads have also risen significantly since 2021, when 71% said they were very or somewhat worried.
Alongside the increase in worry about road accidents, more people have experienced serious harm on the roads. Fifteen percent globally say they have personally experienced serious harm from road accidents in the past two years, with an additional 25% knowing someone else who has been affected. Both figures are at least slightly higher than the totals from 2021 (13% and 20%, respectively).
Analyzing people's perceptions of road risk alongside their experience with harm offers a useful lens into the complexity of risk. The two do not always align.
Among those who have no experience with harm on the roads in the past two years, 14% cite road accidents as the top risk to their safety. This rises to 18% among people who know someone who has been harmed on the roads (but have not been harmed themselves). People who have experienced serious harm themselves are most likely to cite road accidents as the top risk to their safety (25%).
However, people who are most exposed to harm on the roads -- those who have both personally experienced it and know someone else who has experienced it -- are significantly less likely to cite road accidents as the top risk in their daily life (14%) than those who have firsthand or secondhand experience. Further, the most exposed to harm are just as likely as the least exposed to cite road accidents as their top risk.
This suggests a form of risk habituation among the most exposed -- a sense that road accidents are a fact of life in high-risk environments, potentially undermining safety efforts. If people are less worried about road-related accidents in the most high-risk environments, they may take fewer safety precautions when on the roads, in turn contributing to more harm in the future.
The world has changed profoundly in the past few years. Yet, even in the face of such change, how people think about the risks in everyday life has remained constant. Much like in 2021 and 2019, road accidents continue to rank as the top perceived risk to safety in daily life.
The World Risk Poll also shows that people's perceptions of and experiences with harm do not always align, particularly in high-risk road environments. Better understanding these divides between perception and reality is crucial to informing policy and engineering safer roads for all in the future.
Read more about What the World Worries About: Global Perceptions and Experiences of Risk and Harm.
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