Welcome to the Eastern Partnership Road Safety Observatory (EaP RSO). Hosted by Georgia, the Technical Secretariat is led by the ISET Policy Institute and EASST, and is located in Tbilisi, at the ISET Policy Institute.

This important regional endeavour, which is funded by the European Union and supported by the World Bank, is dedicated to contributing swiftly and efficiently to the global target of reducing road traffic death and injury by 50% by 2030 across the five Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. To achieve this goal, our work facilitates the sharing of best practice and the exchange of data to establish a robust foundation of evidence-based approaches to road safety.

Decision making in road safety management is highly dependent upon road safety data. ​​The use of reliable data to identify problems and target resources more effectively is a key element of the Safe System Approach to road safety and vital to make roads safer for all users. Accurate and detailed road crash data helps stakeholders accurately assess issues and solutions such as: analysing risk factors; pinpointing priority issues; formulating strategy and policy; setting targets; monitoring progress and evaluating impact. Without long term data-led management of road safety there will not be a reduction in exposure to crash risk, injuries, or deaths.

Most countries have a mechanism for counting road traffic deaths and can provide some information on road traffic injuries. However, according to the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility all EaP partner countries “need to adapt their crash-related data collection to international standards and expand data collection to other road safety aspects, thus creating more robust regional and national road safety systems.”

Our primary focus is, therefore, on enhancing the capacity of EaP countries in data collection, reliability, and analysis, crucial for informing road safety policy development. While the Observatory will centralise some country-level data, our primary role is to catalyse the development or reinforcement of national road safety data collection, management, and analysis systems, encompassing key road risks beyond crashes.

We officially commenced work on 1 February 2024. We are working to a four-year plan which concludes in January 2028.