Improving road safety can boost efforts to meet development goals – UN report
With millions of people killed, injured or disabled in traffic accidents each year – mostly in urban areas of developing countries – and with burdensome health-care costs creeping ever higher, a new United Nations report has recommended that the world body’s 191 Member governing Assembly step up its efforts to reduce traffic risks and improve global rode safety.
With millions of people killed, injured or disabled in traffic accidents each year – mostly in urban areas of developing countries – and with burdensome health-care costs creeping ever higher, a new United Nations report has recommended that the world body’s 191 Member governing Assembly step up its efforts to reduce traffic risks and improve global rode safety.
The report, by the UN World Health Organization (WHO) on global activities to confront the global road safety crisis, transmitted to the General Assembly by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, says that some 1.2 million people die and millions more are injured in road crashes each year. Reducing such injuries is important to the achievement of several of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly those related to poverty, child mortality and environmental sustainability.
Since road traffic accidents can be prevented, through ways including tightening regulatory controls to better tackle speeding, non-use of safety belts and child restraints, and drinking and driving, WHO says that the international community must take the lead by helping countries – particularly in the developing world – identify road safety measures that have been shown to be effective and implement them.
It says that while road safety issues remain largely neglected and a growing health and development issue, over the past year, there has been increasing awareness on the need to address road safety as a global public health problem. The UN’s coordination activities, led by WHO in collaboration with other agencies, aims to recognize and encourage existing or new road safety initiatives within the UN system and among international partners.
The report recommends, among other things, that the Assembly reconfirm its commitment to addressing the global road safety crises and reaffirm its desire that WHO continue in its role as coordinating body on the issue. It also recommends that the Assembly encourage Member States to include road safety issues within their projects aimed at tackling the MDGs, and to pay particular attention to risk factors, such as safety belts and developing appropriate highway infrastructures.