The Ibero-American Road Safety Observatory (OISEVI) is an organization that was created on the initiative of the region's traffic and road safety authorities, in their desire to address the problems caused by traffic accidents.
The OISEVI was created as a result of the Ibero-American Traffic and Road Safety Meetings convened since 2002 by the DGT and with the support of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation. In this regard, in July 2008, at the VII Meeting of Traffic and Road Safety Officials in Quito, the authorities highlighted their interest and the need to converge in an Ibero-American road safety space to adequately address the challenges that the problem was causing in the countries of the region.
The XVIII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government (SEGIB) held in October 2008 in San Salvador, recognized the importance of the conclusions of the Quito meeting and urged the highest authorities on traffic and road safety in the countries of the region to take the initiative and develop actions aimed at reducing accidents, launching an Ibero-American observatory to support public policies on road safety with the respective follow-up to obtain results.
The regional situation of road safety, the need for a regional organization and a database of accidents that included all the countries of the region were addressed in each meeting and in each one the necessary steps were taken to achieve the objective:
- Road Safety Meeting for Ibero-America and the Caribbean (EISEVI), Madrid. February 2009.
- VIII Meeting of Traffic and Road Safety Officials, Santiago de Chile. June 2009.
- 2nd Meeting on Road Safety of the Mercosur Parliament, Porto Belo. July 2009.
- 19th Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government, Estoril. November 2009.
- Federation of Associations of Victims of Traffic Accidents and NGOs Against Road Violence in Ibero-America, Medellín. February 2010.
- 9th Meeting of Traffic and Road Safety Officials, Montevideo. May 2010.
- 10th Meeting of Traffic and Road Safety Officials, Mexico City. May 2011.
The first Steering Committee of OISEVI was formed in Paris, France, in 2011, with an agreement signed between Argentina, Spain and Mexico. At the same site, these countries signed an agreement with the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to promote the organization and create the IRTAD LAC database. At the international level, the United Nations Organization launched the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020.
Within this framework, the 1st General Assembly of OISEVI was held in 2012 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
In 2013, OISEVI was recognized by the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, in a report entitled "Improving road safety in the world" in which he highlighted the activities carried out to deal with traffic deaths and underlined the intention to standardize the data collection processes and their quality.
OISEVI has been monitoring the national road safety policies of member countries, carrying out, among others, the following activities:
Creating spaces for the analysis of public policies on road safety at the highest decision-making level (government authorities and actors responsible for traffic and road safety).
Promoting the formulation of public policies on road safety and the creation of National Agencies and Observatories in this area.
Standardizing, collecting, processing and analyzing road safety data, contributing to the generation of progress monitoring reports on statistical indicators on road safety.
Promoting the participation of various technical or financial cooperation organizations working in the field of road safety.