| Both Schumacher and Mosley made a plea for urgent action on road safety, an issue which they said needs to be taken seriously by the G8 leading industrialised countries.
Mosley called on the German Government to support a UN Ministerial conference. He said: “Later this year the United Nations will be debating road safety again in the General Assembly. On the agenda will be a proposal to hold a first ever UN global ministerial meeting on road safety in 2009. I hope very much that we can count on the German Government to support this proposal.”
Schumacher urged the German Government to ensure that the G8 works to improve road safety in developing countries. He said: “Today, road crashes kill on the scale of malaria or tuberculosis, yet the international community has not woken up to this horrific waste of life. The cost to developing countries alone is estimated at up to $100bn a year – equivalent to all overseas aid. But road safety is not yet recognised as a development priority.”
Sharing the platform were Make Roads Safe chairman Lord Robertson, German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee, and Costa Rican Transport Minister Karla Gonzalez, who made a powerful speech calling for political commitment to road safety.
Lord Robertson said that people in developing countries should take control of the road safety agenda for themselves.
He said: “High income countries have learnt through painful experience that it is possible to reduce road casualties even as traffic increases. Now the challenge is to transfer and implement this knowledge into low and middle income countries. This will only succeed and be sustainable if these countries have the political will and technical capacity to lead their own road safety strategies and set their own targets.”
The meeting, held just a few weeks before Germany hosted the G8 summit, was organised by German automobile association, ADAC. |
