Around 1.3 million people worldwide are killed in road accidents every year, and up to 50 million are injured. Vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists, make up more than half of those killed and injured. The nonbinding “Stockholm Declaration,” which was endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in August 2020, calls for a new global target to reduce road traffic deaths and injuries by 50% by 2030. Countries are also discussing new vehicle safety regulations within the framework of the UNECE World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29), a regulatory forum that administers, among other things, three agreements on motor vehicles and their equipment.
The Global Legal Research Directorate (GLRD) of the Law Library of Congress recently completed research on the legal requirements for car crash avoidance systems aimed at detecting and classifying vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and bicyclists. We are excited to share with you the report that resulted from this research, Regulation of Crash Avoidance Systems. The report covers 14 selected jurisdictions, namely Australia, Canada, China, France, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the United Kingdom (UK), and the European Union (EU).
The surveys give an overview of mandatory vehicle safety regulations, such as the new EU Regulation 2019/2144 which updates EU type-approval requirements to ensure the general safety of vehicles, in particular with regard to vulnerable road users, as well as of nonbinding recommendations and additional safety features voluntarily added by manufacturers. Furthermore, rules regarding the development of autonomous vehicles, in particular to increase the safety of road traffic, are described.
We invite you to review the information provided in our report. You can also browse additional reports from the Law Library on other topics. To receive alerts when new reports are published, you can subscribe to email updates and the RSS feed for Law Library Reports (click the “subscribe” button on the Law Library’s website).