Road deaths 'costing world $500bn' - 20 Nov 2009

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Road accident related deaths a 'global crisis': UN chief

United Nations, Nov 21 (PTI) Describing road accident related deaths as a 'global crisis', the UN chief has said more needed to be done to tackle traffic deaths in which more than a million people die every year world-wide.

"Each year, more than one million people are killed in traffic accidents ? more than deaths from malaria or diabetes.

This conference is long overdue," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a message at the First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Moscow.

The UN chief said the vast majority of accidents are in low and middle-income countries. In addition to deaths, some 50 million people are severely injured, costing governments one to three per cent of their gross national products.

"Behind these staggering statistics lie the enormous suffering and grief that road accidents inflict on families and communities," he said.

"Our lives have come to depend on mobility.

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PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV Speech at First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues,

I want to welcome you all to Moscow and the first international conference on road safety.

I just asked our Interior Minister how many countries are represented here. 150 countries is a very impressive number. I would like to cordially thank you all for coming to Russia and taking part in this very important event. And I am very pleased that our initiative to hold it has received such enthusiastic response.

I think much has already been said. But there are still some things that I consider important and want to repeat. Until recently, traffic safety was seen by some countries as a purely internal matter, a local problem. Meanwhile, the figures, which I’m sure have already been cited in this room, show that it is one of the main problems of international development, the one which requires common strategies and joint action.

Today, when I looked through the materials prepared for our forum, our conference, I once again realized for myself that the numbers are simply amazing – depressing if you prefer. Despite the fact that they probably have already been cited today I cannot but repeat them: more than 3,500 people are killed every day in road accidents. Different sources state that every year more than a million people (of which one in five are children) are killed throughout the world. In other words, every year we lose one big city, a metropolis. More than 50 million people are injured and crippled. If we do nothing to reverse this trend, then according to at least these estimates, to the data we have, by 2020 road accidents will become the third most serious threat to human health, along with circulatory system diseases and certain other problems.

It is clear that there is no way one can measure the price of human suffering, but we can measure the damage caused to national economies. This has been calculated at a figure of more than 500 billion US dollars, of which developing economies incur approximately 100 billion US dollars. This is a huge amount of money which naturally could be spent for entirely different purposes, for development, for example.

The main cause of road accidents is traffic violations, that is what traditionally happens on the roads in various countries – speeding, drunk driving, simply adopting a disrespectful attitude towards others, and a lack of driving culture. Unfortunately, everything I just referred to exists in our country. We need to create rules at the level of national legislation, rules that would give definite, absolutely clear signals to drivers in all countries. For example, such rules would state that a driver deprived of the right to drive in one country is not able to drive in another one, at least without any prior re-certification.

Along with stepping up repressive measures and increasing fines and penalties, we need to improve training for drivers and pedestrians, provide accident victims with timely quality medical care and, of course, pay special attention to the quality of roads and upgrading road infrastructure.

A special topic for our country, as for many countries (though this is in some way part of a national mentality), is the behaviour of drivers or driving culture. On the other hand, human error must be compensated by the maximum possible security of the vehicles. Recently much has been done in this field and, of course, today's vehicles are significantly different from the one we had of 20, 30 or more than 50 years ago. But it is important to continue to monitor the running order of vehicles and automakers must make greater use of technological innovations. Of course, there is always a choice to be made between the cost of new vehicles and using innovative technology. But since we are talking about security, then I believe this is still more important, even if compared to such indicator as price.

We are convinced that we need to develop immediate and joint systemic measures to better ensure road safety. We must coordinate international efforts in this area. To speak frankly, we can coordinate them, as we agreed today, just as the international community is currently working together to overcome the global financial crisis. The problem we are talking about, the figures we are citing, are no less dramatic for our planet than the consequences of global recession, or even issues of food security. Russia supports the UN initiative to declare the coming decade, from 2011 to 2020, that of action to ensure road safety.

We must intensify the efforts of international financial organisations in this field (or at least give signals as to how such work should proceed), and find ways to support global, regional and national programmes to promote road safety, especially for low- and middle-income countries.

Colleagues, I think that my friends have already told you about how things stand in Russia. In Russia we have approved a National Strategy to improve road safety. Since 2006 we have had a federal target programme designed to reduce the number of car accident victims by half compared to 2004. Nevertheless, the situation in this area is very bad. Last year nearly 30,000 people were killed on Russian roads. Despite the many measures we have taken, things have not improved as much as we would like. Accordingly, after holding a meeting [on August 6, 2009] – and I fully admit that it was held as the result of a succession of very serious incidents – on August 31 I gave orders to the Government Cabinet, the ministries and the various departments. I think that those present here would be interested to know what has been done and, incidentally, what hasn’t been done, and for that I am going to call on the Ministry of the Interior, our State Traffic Safety Inspectorate and other departments.

What have we agreed on? First, there is a systemic change, one that has not yet been implemented but is very important: by March 1 we need to draft regulations for road safety. Unfortunately, I have to openly admit that we do not yet have such regulations, and I am sure that many countries represented here do not have them either, but they are very important. This is because we need to understand how to build roads and how to make them safe. Ultimately, I am convinced that such regulations should be standardized in some sort of global way.

We have a special programme for training drivers, and we have decided to intensify it, to prepare proposals that will enable us to track these processes more actively, and to introduce modern techniques to ensure that driving tests are more accurate. An instruction has been issued to organise a telephone hotline to the traffic police. As far as I know, this has already been implemented. Has it? It is also a very important measure. On the one hand, it can prove useful for any kind of incident, but on the other hand it is an anti-corruption measure, because here too there have been problems.

For employers, we must prepare specific regulations, as well as for those who carry freight, passengers and cargo. Moreover, these regulations are interdepartmental. As far as I know, they have not been prepared, or rather not yet approved by joint order. I propose to do this soon.

There is another issue. A purely human one and, I think an important one. We must create a special programme to ensure that our car owners – those behind the wheel – can provide basic first aid. This amounts to humanitarian help. Every person who witnesses an accident must have basic skills to help those who were affected. I understand that we are working on a corresponding programme in this field as well.

Why did I cite all these measures which seem like local, sort of purely Russian? I am sure that there is much to work on within our international cooperation. I am also sure that similar problems, at least some of them, exist in a number of countries represented here. Therefore, exchanging experiences in this regard is extremely important.

I believe that the recommendations your Conference will work out must take into account Russia's experience (both positive and negative) and international experience, the experience of those countries represented in this room.

I would sincerely like to wish the First Ministerial Conference on Road Safety success. I hope that your work will represent a new stage in cooperation on these very complex issues, bring our positions closer, make them clearer, and make our cooperation more productive. I wish you success in your work.
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Highway To Hell(source-Times of India)

Sometimes in life you get hit by a moment of empathy. I had one a few weeks ago. It happened while i was standing by the six-lane super-highway that circles Delhi. As the trucks, four-by-fours and cars went speeding by, i noticed a group of women with children strapped to their backs, facing up to the traffic as they struggled to cross the road. One question hit me: “How would i like to be in their shoes?”
Ministers attending the world’s first ever UN ministerial summit on road safety in Moscow today should be asking themselves the same question. They have a chance to tackle head-on a hidden pandemic that is killing and maiming vulnerable people in the world’s poorest countries on a vast scale. It is also undermining efforts to reduce poverty, draining health systems of resources, and holding back economic growth.
Few people are aware of the carnage that takes place on the world’s roads. Around 1.3 million people die each year as a result of road crashes. Probably 40 times that number suffer serious injury. Over 90 per cent of road deaths and injuries happen in developing countries. India has the highest death toll in the world at over 1,00,000 annually. For people aged 5-25, cars pose a bigger threat to life than killer diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis – and the threat is growing.
It’s generally people too poor to own a vehicle who face the greatest risk of getting hit by one. And the loss of a breadwinner and the costs of health treatment can mean a oneway ticket to extreme poverty. The human costs of this pandemic are beyond estimation. You can’t put a price on grief, trauma and the loss of a loved one. But there’s an economic cost, which also impacts severely. Road traffic injuries typically cost countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia the equivalent of 1-3 per cent of GDP a year.
Many health ministers are already aware of the damage inflicted by road traffic injuries. I have visited trauma wards in hospitals in India where over half of the beds are occupied by road injury victims. Treating these victims is diverting finance and skilled medical care from other priority areas.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy is the political indifference that perpetuates the carnage. We could do so much to prevent road deaths at such low cost – yet we do so little.
When it comes to avoiding road injuries
it’s all so desperately simple. Roads can be designed for pedestrian safety, by separating cars, trucks and buses from people. Governments can enforce laws that reduce speed, ensure the wearing of helmets and seat belts, clamp down on drunken driving, and regulate road users. These are affordable measures that are tried, tested but widely ignored.
When i met Delhi’s city leaders recently they seemed committed to taking action, yet face severe challenges. This is a city with an unregulated bus company that kills over 100 people a year with monotonous regularity, in which women and children sit on the back of motorcycles with no helmets, and in which disregard for basic traffic rules is the norm. Is it really beyond a country that is a world leader in economic growth and can put a satellite into orbit, to enforce basic traffic laws?
It’s not just developing country governments that need to act more decisively. Aid donors like the World Bank are investing huge sums on road networks – and almost nothing on road safety. It goes without saying that roads are vital for development. But in their neglect, these policies are killing people. Surely donors have to think more about the security of the people they are supposed to be helping.
Scratch the surface, and government planners are measuring success in kilometres of metalled roads. This approach combines indefensible ethics with illiterate economics. The simple truth is that our current approach is unsustainable and unaffordable.
There is an alternative path – and it starts in Moscow. The Make Roads Safe campaign is calling on the ministerial conference to prepare the ground for a UN Decade of Action on road safety. Through global collaboration we could halve the projected increase in traffic-related death and injury by 2020, saving five million lives and preventing 50 million injuries. As part of the package, we are calling on aid donors to spend $300 million on a plan to get national road safety initiatives moving.
Of course, there are many people in governments across the world who will see the Moscow summit as a diversion from the big ticket issues of economic growth, security and climate change. For them, i have just one plea. Try a little empathy. Next time your motorcade is heading along the metalled highway to the airport, take a look at the kids braving the high-speed traffic en route to school – and try imagining that they are your kids.
The writer is an actress and global ambassador for the Make Roads Safe campaign.

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