World Health Organization’s estimates of death related to road traffic crashes and their discrepancy with other countries' national report

Background: due to a lack of effective registry system for road traffic deaths, some internationalorganizations like the world health organization provide the estimated number of road trafficdeaths. it was shown that there are differences in the number of road traffic deaths between thewho estimates and national reports even in high-income countries. this study aimed to aninvestigation of reasons for differences between the national reports and world healthorganization estimates about road traffic deaths.methods: this study focus to investigate the world health organization reports of global statusreport for road safety in years of 2009, 2013, 2015 and 2018 and related articles about theestimates of deaths related to road traffic crashes and the observed differences between thewho estimates and national reports.results: the findings showed that the observed differences between the who estimates and national reports could be due to errors in the road traffic death registration system, errors in theregression model which was used for estimation, proposed variables for estimations, or all ofthem.conclusions: the estimations of who about road traffic deaths can be useful for countriesespecially for those which don’t have the road traffic registry system or the registry system doesnot meet the quality criteria. these estimates may not be sufficiently robust if disregard for spatialdifferences, the epidemiological pattern of risk factors among the countries, and the type ofregression model which was used for estimation.