UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon led global events at the start of the week. He emphasised that road crashes have a “devastating impact” on communities and families.

“Road traffic deaths and injuries also place an enormous strain on a country’s health care system, and on the national economy in general,” said Ban.

“In regions where young people constitute a major part of the population, the problem is even more acute. On average, road traffic injuries cost low- and middle-income countries more than one per cent of Gross National Product. For all these reasons, road traffic injuries are an important obstacle to development.”

The Make Roads Safe campaign in the US published a report detailing the number of US citizens killed abroad in road crashes. The report was covered in the New York Times and Washington Post.

In London, the Make Roads Safe coalition organised a series of events – the culmination of months of intense campaigning.

Michael Schumacher was joined by Prime Minister Tony Blair, Global Road Safety Commission chairman Lord Robertson and FIA President Max Mosley in highlighting the growing world-wide problem. Schumacher said he supports the proposal that the UN should start to tackle what is a “preventable loss of life”.

He added: “A thousand young people under the age of 25 die every day on the roads. Road crashes kill on the scale of Malaria or Tuberculosis, yet the international community has not woken up to this horrific waste of life.”

Blair said that road safety needs to be understood as a development issue. He said: “Every minute of every day a child is killed or seriously injured on the world’s roads. Road crashes are the second leading cause of death for young men after HIV/AIDS, and in some African countries more than 70 per cent of those killed on the roads are young breadwinners.  It is becoming clear that road injury has a serious impact on the wider development goals we are all trying to achieve.”

Figures issued by the Make Roads Safe campaign showed that road crashes are now the leading cause of death worldwide for 10-25 year olds; 1000 young people aged under 25 die on the world’s roads every day; and that by 2015 road crashes will be the main cause of death and disability for children aged 5-14 in developing countries.

David Ward, Director General of the FIA Foundation urged people to sign a petition calling for the UN to act on road deaths.

“The Make Roads Safe petition aims to get at least 1.2 million signatures – the number of people killed on the roads each year. We want to send a strong message to world leaders by the time the UN General Assembly debates road safety in November.”