Make roads safe: time for action

This report, published by the Commission for Global Road Safety, calls for the automobile industry to play a leading role in promoting the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety with an ‘opt out’ consumers’ contribution added to the sale price of each new car in order to fund road injury prevention programmes.

Key issues highlighted by the report include:

• road crashes kill an estimated 1,300,000 people each year and injure up to 50 million more. The vast majority of these deaths and injuries are occurring in developing countries where road safety awareness and capacity is low, and where both traffic levels and road casualties are rising rapidly.
• children are amongst the most vulnerable of all road users. A million children and adolescents are killed or seriously injured on the roads each year.
• there is now a global mandate for action to reduce road traffic injuries. UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/64/255 has established the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 with a goal to ‘stabilise and reduce’ road deaths by 2020.

To secure the above-mentioned Decade’s ambitious goal, the authors contend that this requires a step change in ownership, delivery and accountability mechanisms for road safety at global, regional and national levels.

In conclusion, the authors argue that road deaths and injuries in developing countries have been neglected in large part because they were not included in the international community’s sustainability framework, including the Millennium Development Goals. This ‘missing link’ must be addressed and road injury recognised as an emerging issue of sustainable development.