Improving road safety outcomes is not just a question of better infrastructure or more data. The constraint is often managerial: how decisions are made, justified and sustained over time.

The recent Road Safety for Managers course delivered by the IRF addressed this gap directly, equipping professionals with the frameworks and tools needed to move from fragmented actions to coherent, system-level safety management.

Delivered by a multidisciplinary faculty including Miguel-Angel Serrano Santos, George Yannis, Marko Ševrović and Craig Milligan, the course focused on the principle that road safety improves when institutions can interpret risk correctly and act on it decisively.

Participants worked through how to translate crash data, exposure metrics, and Safety Performance Indicators into targeted investments and interventions, shifting from reactive responses to anticipatory management. Concepts such as the Safe System Approach and Vision Zero were not treated as abstract policies, but as operational models guiding investment, design and enforcement decisions.

A recurring issue addressed in the training is that identifying high-risk locations is insufficient without structured follow-through. Roads continue to underperform when safety deficiencies are not systematically diagnosed and corrected. The course emphasised methods such as road safety audits, crash analysis and risk diagnostics that account for human behaviour, not just engineering standards. This reframes safety audits from compliance exercises into decision-support tools, where the responsibility ultimately sits with managers to accept, mitigate or justify risk.

Lastly, participants examined evidence-based treatments and evaluation merhods supported by Crash Modification Factors and Cost Benefit Analysis. ,Emerging tools such as video-based conflict analysis, allow earlier identification of risk before crashes happen. This creates a continuous cycle of diagnosis, intervention and monitoring, improving both the speed and accuracy of decision-making.

Taken together, the course demonstrates that road safety performance is shaped less by isolated technical measures and more by the quality of leadership behind them. According to IRF Lead Instructor Miguel-Angel Serrano Santos:

“When managers can connect data, design, and operations within a single framework, safety interventions become more targeted, more defensible, and more durable, delivering sustained benefits for all road users, particularly the most vulnerable”.

The strong engagement confirms continued demand for decision-oriented road safety training. IRF will offer this course again, while continuing to support its members year-round through training, applied research and policy engagement