| Former NATO Chief Lord Robertson
of Port Ellen and the international commission, whose members
include seven times Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher,
cautioned that failing to act on road deaths will jeopardise
key global development goals on health and poverty.
Commenting on the launch of the report, Lord Robertson,
himself a survivor of a serious car crash, said:
“
In 2005 millions of people, and the leaders of the G8,
responded to the call to Make Poverty History. Yet many
of the gains for development won in 2005 will be at risk
if action is not taken to reverse the growing epidemic
of road traffic death and injury, with its terrible human
and economic cost. Every day 3000 people are killed in
road crashes. We know that many of these deaths are preventable.
But we need political leadership from the G8 and a significant
increase in resources if we are to Make Roads Safe.”
Of the 1.2 million people killed and 50 million injured
around the world in road traffic crashes each year, more
than 85 per cent of casualties are in low and middle income
countries. Road deaths, which are second only to HIV/AIDS
as a global killer of young men, are forecast to almost
double by 2020 in these countries.
The Commission for Global Road Safety, established by
the FIA Foundation, demands urgent action to prevent these
forecasts from being realised. These demands include a
call for G8 countries to support a $300 million, 10-year
Action Plan to improve road safety in developing countries.
Road projects in developing countries funded with overseas
development aid must include a minimum 10 per cent for
road safety improvements including engineering measures,
safety rating and assessment, and wider community based
road safety initiatives. The report also called for the
creation of a United Nations Road Safety summit to coordinate
an international approach to road traffic injury prevention.
Currently, road traffic injuries are not included in the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and receive just a
tiny fraction of the funding allocated to Malaria and TB,
diseases which cause death and injury on a similar scale.
Road crashes also hit the poorest countries and poorest
people hardest. The annual economic costs of road crashes
to low and middle income nations are estimated at between
$65 billion to $100 billion. This compares with official
overseas aid in 2005 of $106 billion.
Lord Robertson has sent the Make Roads Safe report to
all the G8 leaders and is calling for global road safety
to be included in the agenda of next year’s G8 summit
in Germany. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has already written
to Lord Robertson confirming that he would support its
inclusion in a future G8 meeting.
To promote the messages of the report, a Make Roads Safe
campaign has also been launched. The main objective of
the campaign, led by the FIA Foundation, is to put global
road safety on the G8 agenda and secure political and financial
commitments for the recommendations proposed in the Make
Roads Safe report;
The campaign also aims to raise awareness amongst young
people around the world of the global, developmental problems
of road safety. This will help to raise awareness about
and acceptance of domestic road safety amongst men in their
late teens and early 20s, the key high risk age group in
terms of road crashes in industrialised countries.
The campaign website www.makeroadssafe.org includes an
online petition. Organisations and individuals wishing
to support the campaign are invited to sign up to the petition
which will run during 2006 and 2007.
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