The work aims to explore the application status of threat appeal strategy in road traffic safety activities in various countries and clarify the impact of threat appeals on driving safety. The existing literature was reviewed and the empirical research concerning the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of threat appeal in driving safety was compared. With the focuses on the inconsistencies of literature results, the causes of the inconsistent results were analyzed. The limitations of the existing research were summarized, and the future research trends were pointed out. The result showed that the key to the effectiveness of threat appeal lay in the degree of threat arousal, severity, perceptibility, induced emotional experience and effective executable suggestions and measures. Various factors should be considered comprehensively to evaluate its effect. Future research can integrate these factors to determine the best type of threat appeals in road safety activities.