| The FIA and its member clubs have played a key role in supporting the Make Roads Safe campaign helping to gather 1 million signatures which have been submitted to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The UN conference, with participation at least at Ministerial level, will be held in the Russian Federation in 2009.
Lord Robertson, Chairman of the Commission for Global Road Safety, which first proposed a global Ministerial conference in its Make Roads Safe report of 2006, addressed the UN General Assembly and met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to discuss the global road safety crisis. He said:
“I am delighted that the UN has today recognised the scale of human suffering and economic loss caused by road traffic deaths and injuries. Now we must ensure that the UN Conference is not just another talking shop, but secures real commitments and takes real action to reverse the tide of global road deaths.”
With continued support from the FIA and its clubs, the Make Roads Safe campaign will be promoting a strong agenda for action to the UN Ministerial conference, including:
• Calling on the international community to fund, at minimum, a 10 year, $300 million, action plan to increase road safety capacity in middle and low income countries;
• To ensure that 10% of road infrastructure budgets funded by international donors should be earmarked for safety.
During the General Assembly session, the UN heard that road deaths are now the number one killer of young people aged 10-24 worldwide. The latest forecasts show that unless action is taken, more than twenty million lives could be lost from 2000-2015, with a doubling of the annual death rate by 2030. |
