The article presents the current issues and latest trends of the legal and administrative aspects of ensuring public security in the field of how road traffic safety is ensured. The legal regulation in this area and the problems of organizing the activity of institutions responsible for traffic safety are discussed; the situation of traffic safety in Lithuania and other countries in the Baltic region is studied. Utmost attention is attached to the organization and coordination of comprehensive measures, dedicated to the reduction of the rate of accidents. The authors applied general scientific methods of studying objective reality, peculiar to legal sciences: systematic document analysis, meta-analysis, structural-functional analysis, teleological, comparative, critical approach, generalisation and prediction. As a result in this research is emphasised the importance of decentralisation in ensuring public security at the level of the road traffic safety; the main guidelines of modernization in this field are presented.