High level of accidents and injuries in Ukraine prompts the search for ways to solve this problem. The purpose of this work is the study of modern approaches to assessing the safety of transport systems and the justification of the need to improve the existing or develop new methods of determining the risk of accidents on the country's roads. The article analyses the works related to the study of the functioning of the driver-vehicle-road-environment system, by the theory of performance properties of the motor vehicle, which is the methodological basis for the analysis of traffic accidents. The analysis of modern approaches to the assessment and audit of traffic hazards revealed the widespread use by researchers of the multiplicative form of models, which corresponds to the provisions of the risk theory: in the event of independent factors, the aggregate risk can be estimated on the basis of the product of partial risks. The general procedure for risk assessment is a process that includes the identification, analysis and comparative assessment of risk. The inadequacy of the existing risk assessment methods is manifested in the inability to predict the risk of road accidents based on the data on the state of the environment and the dynamics of its changes. The obtained conclusions indicate the need to develop new methods that will allow assessing the risk of traffic accidents based on a combination of road characteristics and elements of the external environment. At the same time, it should be remembered that risk factors can manifest themselves in complex combinations, and therefore the identification of the critical factor - the real cause of the failure of the driver-vehicle-road-environment system is a task.