The Second Global Conference on Road Safety was opened yesterday by President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia, six years after the First Global Ministerial Conference in Moscow, which saw the declaration of the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety. Over 70 FIA Club delegates were in attendance.

This conference is a mid-term review of the UN Decade and aims at giving it renewed momentum, in order to reach the ambitious Sustainable Development Goal target of halving the number of road fatalities by 2020.

At the plenary session Jean Todt, FIA President and UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety, urged national governments to consider the establishment of a large global fund, capable of directing targeted and coordinated action to those countries where the need is greatest. He said: “I would urge that in a few years, when we look back at this Conference in Brasilia, we will recall that it was here that we took the first concrete steps to the formation of a UN Road Safety Fund.” 

Jean Todt later took part in a high-level panel on the ‘Next steps to accelerate progress towards achieving the goal of the Decade of Action’, chaired by World Bank Group Chief Financial Officer Bertrand Badre, who is also a member of the FIA High Level Panel for Road Safety.

Ministers from Luxembourg, Ghana and Saudia Arabia as well as the Administrator of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also attended the panel discussion.

Finally, on the invitation of the European Federation of Road Traffic Victims (FEVR), Jean Todt participated in a side-event hosted by the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety and Road Victims on ‘Justice and the post crash response’. The presentations, case studies and discussions focussed on collision investigation, criminal prosecution, civil compensation and victim’s right.

Jean Todt spoke out in favour of a better enforcement of traffic and road safety laws, saying that it “will not only reduce the number of crimes committed, but also provide a stronger legal framework to defend the most vulnerable road users, pedestrians and cyclists.”

The second and final day of the conference is taking place on 19 November. 

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