Evaluation Training Days for Highways England

The IRTAD 2026 conference highlighted a major shift in road safety practice, driven by advances in AI, connected vehicle data, and international collaboration. From explainable machine learning models delivering significant gains in fatality reduction to critical insights on data bias and ethical governance, the field is moving beyond prediction toward transparent, proactive systems. At the same time, new evidence on under-reporting, inequality, and policy effectiveness is reshaping how countries design and evaluate road safety strategies globally.