Argentina: Road Safety
Contact: Veronica Raffo, E-mail: vraffo@worldbank.org



What was the development challenge?

Road crash fatalities are an epidemic in the developing world, the number one killer of
the young, with huge economic and social costs. These fatalities can only be stabilized
and then reduced if all actors work together to strengthen institutions, ensuring strong
and sustainable multi-sectoral coordination and action.

While past projects have attempted to lower the mortality rate in Argentina, these have
historically been implemented as fragmented single-sector initiatives with outcomes too
small to be measured, and were often one-off projects with no follow-up activities. The
Road Safety Project supported the newly created Argentina Road Safety Lead Agency
(ANSV) to unify safety efforts and combat road crash fatalities.

What approaches did this project use to deliver solutions?

To attack this epidemic of road crash fatalities, the Road Safety Project provided
constant support to the ANSV, enabling it to deliver its institutional management
functions and build partnerships to save lives. The project gathered evidence to
continuously retrofit project design and implementation, using expertise, methodologies,
and systems developed by countries that perform well at ensuring road safety. Since
credible, accessible performance data and related crash analyses are crucial to lowering
road crash fatalities, the Road Safety Project made connections across sectors to gather
this information and ensure that all relevant analysis was being brought to bear on the
problem. It also leveraged strong partnerships with police agencies, the health sector,
and the OECD’s International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD) Group to
push forward life-saving initiatives, ranging from highway improvements in high-risk
corridors, to innovative safety education campaigns.



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What lessons does this project offer for others?

In a key lesson for how to generate better citizen outcomes, this project demonstrated
that well-focused national leadership and supporting resources can catalyze effective
partnership engagement with provincial and local governments, NGOs and the
private sector to achieve consensus on desired results and the measures to achieve
them. Another crucial innovation has been the Incentive Fund (with output-based
disbursements), which has enabled the ANSV to engage in a purposeful way with a wide
body of partners, bringing them together to focus on road safety.

An additional lesson is that South-South dialogue and action on a regional basis can
be stimulated when best practice measures are taken and given high visibility. The
Argentina Road Safety Project has created interest in other Latin American countries
facing the challenges of creating a lead agency to manage their national road safety
effort. It has also spurred action to create a Regional Road Safety Observatory.
Argentina’s work in partnership with the IRTAD Group and its Spanish counterparts is
serving as a model to assist the related development of regional protocols – offering its
neighbors access to a useful lens for relentless focus on citizens’ outcomes.




Source: World Bank Group.

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