Background Approximately 1.3 million people die each year and another 50 million are injured by traffic events. To change this trend and reduce road traffic injuries and deaths (RTI) by 50%, the WHO and the UN (2011) adopted the Decades of Global Road Safety Action Plan (DRSA-2011–2020). Colombia proposed reducing its mortality RTI by 25% (2021). This study describes and analyzes the preliminary results of the DRSA program in Colombia.

Methods This is a descriptive study about of RTI in Colombia between 2010–2015 years. The information on deaths was taken from the National Administrative Department of Statistics (based on CIE records V01-V89 and V98-V99) and the annual reports from National Institute of Legal Medicine. To estimate the DRSA goal, a methodology proposed in 2011 was used, in which the results are expressed as delta-Δ between the numbers of expected/reported cases per year. We calculate the percentage differences with P value<0.05.

Results Although there are differences between the sources of information, they coincide that mortality rates due to RTI have increased annually between 1.5% and 2.6%. Deaths occur mainly in vulnerable actors of the road: motorcyclists (37.7%), pedestrians (27.4%), and cyclists (5.0%). The injuries have increased 3.2% in average annually. The national RTI delta is greater than 40% by 2015 regarding to the global DRSA target (P<0.05)

Conclusion Priority policy interventions must be on vulnerable actors of the road (motorcyclists and pedestrians) they are contributing in more than 65% of RTI. It is also vital law’s enforcement, reducing gaps between norms from the law and its real application. The quality of information should be an aspect to improve. This study may have the limitation that vital statistics have problems of coverage by incomplete registration of deaths or poor classification of certified deaths.