A new framework on gender and road safety

Road crashes kill 1.19 million people annually (WHO, Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2023). In Africa, more than half of those deaths are pedestrians, cyclists, and others who were never inside a vehicle. Across twelve African countries, 94% of female respondents reported walking as a mode of transport, more than any other mode (Vias Institute, ESRA2 Road Safety Culture in Africa, 2021).

By examining road fatalities, data show that men are three times more likely to die in a car crash than women (WHO, 2026). Research shows that women are 73% more likely to be injured in a frontal crash than men because of the vehicle safety elements that are designed around the male body (Joy, 2023). Those discrepancies in patterns prove that road safety is a gendered issue and that to reach Vision Zero, we need to address the gender gap in data and road safety actions.

The latest Trans-Safe publication, by ICLEI World Secretariat, makes this visible and actionable. The accompanying e-learning module walks through the same material in roughly fifteen minutes, designed to be watched by a team and paused for discussion. The publication carries the full case studies, pillar-level matrices, and thirteen recommendations sequenced by actor.

The framework

The framework is organized around two axes. Along one sit the five pillars of the Safe System approach endorsed by the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021–2030: safe roads, multi-modal mobility and land use, safe vehicles, safe road users, and post-crash care. Along the other side sit three levels of gender integration, set by UN Women.

Gender-sensitive acknowledges the gender difference and generates disaggregated data, without yet acting. Gender-responsive designs interventions targeting the gaps that data reveals. Gender-transformative changes who holds the decision-making power.

Evidence from practice

The publication populates those cells with documented cases, prioritising African and Global South examples.

In Morocco, the World Bank's 2017 social survey used sex-disaggregated data to inform the design of female-friendly infrastructure, training, and codes of conduct, later shaping BRT developments in Casablanca and Agadir.

The Philippines' Department of Public Works and Highways went further, introducing a toolkit that embeds a gender action checklist into early feasibility studies and procurement, a tool transferable to other Global South contexts.

At the transformative level, CARE International's rural road maintenance programme in Bangladesh employed around 42,000 vulnerable women annually between 1983 and 2006, pairing road work with training in human rights, health, and income generation. Roughly 60% remained economically active after graduating, and 90% of community members acknowledged the improved road quality these women delivered.

Egypt's Harassmap, launched in 2010 alongside the film 678, provoked national debate on harassment in public transport and contributed to the criminalisation of sexual harassment in 2014. In Kenya, the Flone Initiative's Usalama Wa Umma programme has trained 554 drivers and transport workers on combating gender-based violence.

In Quito, Ecuador, the "Bájale al Acoso" SMS hotline received 1,500 reports in a year, 43 of which reached court. And in Belgium, the Go For Zero "speed dating" campaign recorded women rejecting men who drove dangerously, directly challenging the association between speed and masculine appeal.

Dakar's BRT in Senegal targets raising women's share of employees from a 6% baseline to 25%, treating employment as empowerment alongside passenger safety.

Towards a safe system for all

Women constitute approximately 20% of road safety stakeholders across Africa (González-Hernández et al., Transportation Research Procedia, 2023). The governance gap and invisibility in data can lead to an expanding safety gap. Hence, our recommendations cover the road safety governance and decision-making processes as well as the road safety interventions across the five pillars.

Access the module through the TRANS-SAFE e-learning program. Download the publication for full case studies, matrices, and recommendations.