Road traffic accidents take some 1.35 million lives every year and cost most countries three per cent of their gross domestic product, the top UN health official said on Wednesday as the Third Global Ministerial Conference On Road Safety kicked off in Stockholm, Sweden.
Saving lives by improving road safety is “one of the many objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, the United Nations chief said in his message for the global day set aside for remembering the victims of traffic accidents.
With 90 per cent of road-related injuries and fatalities occurring in developing countries, it is “absolutely essential” for those countries to put road safety on top of their agenda. That’s the message from the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety, Jean Todt, who spoke with UN News's Florence Westergard earlier this year about how important road safety is to global development and what can be done to improve it.
For this latest Lid Is On podcast from UN News, we’ll hear from three of the leading voices involved in the new UN Road Safety Trust Fund, launched this month, which is committed to “accelerating progress” in saving the lives of pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists across the world.
With some 1.3 million drivers, passengers and pedestrians dying each year on the world’s roads, the United Nations took a major step to address this tragedy by launching on Thursday a trust fund to spur action that could save lives and prevent the loss of opportunity associated with road accidents.
Calling for greater efforts to reduce road traffic deaths worldwide, the United Nations envoy for road safety on Monday stressed that a proposed UN fund, along with national investments, would turn the tide of rising fatality numbers.
Some 650 people are killed each day in road accidents throughout Africa, a senior United Nations official today said, calling for more to be done to keep drivers – as well as pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists – safe.
