Highlights • The Road Safety Management Systems (RSMS) of local governments have been evaluated using 24 indicators from 2015 to 2019. • Continuous evaluation of the RSMS indicators for five years helped to improve road safety performance in local governments. • The most remarkable increase has been identified in the areas of institutional management and intervention. • The increase in overall scores of the RSMS is higher in provinces than in metropolitans. • The relationship between institutional management, interventions and the final outcomes of RSMS needs to be studied further.

Abstract This study analyzes what has changed in the road safety management systems (RSMS) of local governments after evaluating the related indicators continuously from 2015 to 2019. It has evaluated 24 indicators in four areas of RSMS such as institutional management, intervention, intermediate outcome, and the final outcome, according to . It seems that continuous evaluation of indicators of RSMSs in local governments for five years has helped to improve road safety performance in local governments. The result shows that the average overall scores have increased from 77.92 to 83.89, a 7.7% increase. This improvement should have resulted from the competition between local governments, which do not want to be at the bottom in the score comparison. The most remarkable increase has been identified in the areas of institutional management and intervention. They have increased by 13.3% and 16.0%, respectively. In terms of types of local governments, it has been found that the increase in overall scores is higher in provinces which include most rural areas than in metropolitans. However, it has been found that the improvement of institutional management and interventions are not directly associated with the increase of the intermediate and final outcomes, at least during the five years. Further studies examining the relationship between the four areas of RSMS are needed.