Feeling safe and being safe are not the same thing. A new global study by Economist Enterprise, supported by Brembo, reveals that misplaced public confidence in road safety has quietly become one of the biggest barriers to making roads actually safer.
A new global study has uncovered a striking disconnect between how safe road users feel and how safe transport professionals believe those roads actually are. While nine in ten people report feeling safe during their daily travel, fewer than half — just 45% — of transport professionals who design, build, and operate mobility systems agree. The research, titled Safety in Motion: Driving Trust in Modern Mobility, was conducted by Economist Enterprise and supported by braking technology company Brembo, covering ten major vehicle-producing markets — Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and the US — together accounting for around 75% of global vehicle production.
The gap is most alarming in Brazil, China, and India, where 94% of road users report feeling safe — the highest among all markets surveyed — compared with just 18% of transport professionals. Yet these three markets combined record an average road fatality rate of 16.2 deaths per 100,000 people, roughly double the study average. With 1.2 million people killed on the world’s roads every year, the study argues that misplaced public confidence has become an overlooked barrier to progress.
Mr. Jean Todt, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety, said the research makes clear that road users are far more confident in the safety of their daily travel than mobility experts, calling it a serious concern. He added that while trust is essential for mobility, overconfidence can cause people to take unnecessary risks.
Ms. Pratima Singh, Principal of Policy and Insights at Economist Enterprise, who led the research, said that in Brazil, China, and India, public confidence has grown alongside rapid and visible modernisation — new infrastructure, smarter vehicles, and better technology — but that confidence has outpaced actual safety performance. When people believe systems are safer than they are, she noted, they often do not exercise the necessary caution on the road.
The study also found that trust is not distributed equally. Low-income users are nearly twice as likely as middle and high-income users to report low or mixed confidence in their daily travel safety. Among generations, Millennials are the most confident at 94%, while Gen Z and Baby Boomers are the least trusting, with 12% and 16% respectively expressing low or mixed confidence.
As vehicles become more technologically advanced, the way people interact with automated systems has emerged as a key concern. Only 3% of industry professionals today identify mechanical failure as a leading cause of road incidents. Instead, 30% cite misuse or misunderstanding of driver assistance systems as the greatest cause of safety issues, while 24% point to distracting in-vehicle features as the most serious risk. Compounding this, 65% of professionals believe advertising may overstate system capabilities, 62% say it implies users need to pay less attention, and 60% believe it emphasises benefits while downplaying limitations.
Despite their high confidence, 88% of road users say they support stronger safety measures — including lower speed limits and greater enforcement — and would pay more for safer transport. Yet 68% of transport professionals identify poor coordination between regulators and industry as the biggest barrier to improvement.
The study identifies four distinct trust environments across the ten markets. Brazil, China, and India are classified as trust optimists, where a 76-point confidence gap reflects optimism outpacing outcomes in the study’s highest-fatality markets. Japan and South Korea are trust guardians, with the narrowest gap built on independent validation and reliability. France, Germany, and Italy are trust pragmatists, with the lowest fatality rates but a 39-point gap where high public trust coexists with scepticism toward technologies that feel opaque. The UK and the US are trust negotiators, where high user confidence is tethered to institutions but remains vulnerable to regulatory failure or corporate missteps.
Mr. Matteo Tiraboschi, Executive Chairman of Brembo, said closing the trust gap requires collective action across the mobility ecosystem, with industry innovating responsibly, policymakers creating effective regulatory frameworks, and both working together to help people understand both the capabilities and the limitations of new technologies.
Mr. Todt concluded with a stark assessment: people are not safe on the road today, and trust on the road should not be taken as a given — it must be earned. Research and discussion matter, he said, but only action will save lives.
