Last year, the World Bank and FIA Foundation launched an initiative known as the Global Road Safety Facility in order to provide technical assistance particularly for schemes led by developing countries to reduce road deaths. It was the first ever world wide funding mechanism for road safety. 

However, too few governments and donors have contributed to the Facility which so far has only collected $15 million. A key recommendation of the Commission for Global Road Safety was to establish a $300 million action plan to reduce road deaths.

Ward said: “There are a lot of people telling us that the Facility is a good idea but we are not getting anything like the $300 million required. We need our governments and major donors to wake up to the problem.”

In a candid discussion of the issue, Ward said that road safety was too often “not on the radar screen” of policy makers.

He added: “We’ve made some progress as there’s now the political commitment but we’ve not got the resources behind it yet.”

The G8 has set up the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) to manage funding for road development across the continent but little has been allocated for safety measures. The $20 million that the ICA has set aside for road safety represents only 1.7 per cent of the total, while the World Bank recommends that the figure should be 10 per cent. The ICA last met in Berlin in January but did not discuss road safety. It is due to meet again in October.

In the UK, the Department for International Development committed £330,000 for road safety overseas in the year to March 2004 in a total spending of £20 million on road projects.

Jonas Hermanson, a Transport Specialist at the World Bank, agreed that more money is urgently needed. He said: “We need to get governments to appreciate that they need to do something about road safety. It really needs to be put back on track. That’s why the advocacy campaigns on this issue are so important.”