Post impact care and national road safety plans and targets

• Health of survivors and long term disability
• Road traffic deaths and injuries
• Socio-economic costs and the value of prevention
• Survivable and non-survivable road traffic injury?
• The problem: road traffic injury consequences
• Time between road crash and road death?

Post impact care and national road safety plans and targets

While post impact care is acknowledged as a key road safety strategy, it is often neglected in national road safety plans and programmes in European countries. This may be because it is outside the direct responsibility of the lead agency for road safety which is generally the Ministry of Transport. Good inter-governmental coordination arrangements can ensure that attention is given to this key area in target-setting and plans. New Zealand, for example, targets a specific reduction in hospitalisations, the number of people hospitalised for more than one day and the number of people hospitalised for more than three days. Improving trauma management systems is one of the priorities of the Road Safety to 2010 strategy (Land Transport Safety Authority Wellington 2003)