The MoU commits the two organisations to work together until 2011 to develop a business plan for designing and then implementing iRAP’s road risk mapping and road audit protocols for developing countries. The agreement will be overseen for the Bank by the Global Road Safety Facility, hosted at World Bank headquarters in Washington D.C.

IRAP is currently developing protocols in South Africa, Malaysia and Costa Rica. Similar programmes in Europe and Australia are proving very successful in highlighting road design issues, engaging policy makers, road authorities and a newly informed public, and seeing real, injury reducing, changes to dangerous sections of road network.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed by iRAP’s chairman, John Dawson, and by the World Bank’s Lead Road Safety Specialist, Tony Bliss, at a press conference during the FIA Foundation’s annual meeting in Barcelona on 19 October.

IRAP, which is supported by the FIA Foundation and motoring organizations around the world, brings together a series of regional Road Assessment Programmes in Europe, Australia and North America which rate the safety performance of roads just as New Car Assessment Programmes (NCAPs) give star rating for passenger cars.