Investing to Save Lives: An impact investment case for preventing road trauma

This report makes the case for strategic investment in preventative road safety measures and ‘paves the way for a fresh assessment of the benefits of stronger road safety measures’. It suggests that investing early to prevent injury can deliver financial dividends as well as saving lives.

The report features a series of case studies drawn from road safety programmes in Australia and Cambodia. The case studies detail the health costs resulting from road trauma in high income countries, and the hidden costs borne by families in low income countries with limited access to health services, insurance protection or welfare.

The analysis in the report employs an impact investment approach designed to deliver better outcomes and financial return, and measure both.

The report says the Australian case studies demonstrate the ‘powerful financial case for frontloading investment in safer road infrastructure’. Meanwhile, in low and middle income countries, the incidence of road trauma is higher and growing and there are a range of hidden costs – to health care systems, to insurers, to victims and their families and to wider society.

The report says this ‘innovative approach’ to unlocking capital and directing it to road safety measures has global potential.