Global Road Safety: Goal to Cut Road Traffic Deaths & Injuries by Half - UN Chief | United Nations

Remarks by António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, at  the High-Level Meeting on Global Road Safety.

"...speaking at the opening event, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, noted that “road fatalities are closely linked to poor infrastructure, unplanned urbanization, lax social protection and health care systems, limited road safety literacy, and persistent inequalities both within and between countries.”

At the same time, Guterres argued, unsafe roads are a key obstacle to development.

The UN chief said, “Traffic accidents can push entire families into poverty through either the loss of a breadwinner or the costs associated with lost income and prolonged medical care.”

At the same time, developing countries lose between 2 and 5 percent of GDP every year because of them.”

“Our goals are clear: cut road traffic deaths and injuries by half by 2030 and promote sustainable mobility with safety at its core”, added Guterres.

The UN chief concluded telling Member States he counts on them to “raise attention and awareness and to foster more inclusive collaboration and closer coordination across sectors and stakeholders.”

From the World Health Organization (WHO), Assistant Director-General Stewart Simonson recalled the fatality numbers saying they are “too high a price to pay for mobility.”

According to Simonson, “putting safety at the core of our transport systems is an urgent moral imperative.”

The Assistant Director-General believes that “a 50 percent reduction in road traffic deaths and injuries by 2030 is an ambitious but achievable target.”

“In fact, reductions of just 7 percent a year over the next decade will result in more than a 50 percent overall reduction. It is important for policymakers to be ever mindful that safe mobility is fundamentally a human right,” Simonson said.

The UN Special Envoy for Road Safety, Jean Todt, was also at the event, saying that “the world is uniting to attack this invisible pandemic threath.”

“Increase in funding for road safety in recent years is encouraging, but not enough”, Todt said.

The Special Envoy noted some progress, but called out the “unacceptable discrepancy” between what is happening in the developed world compared with the developing world.

Over the last 45 years, Todt said, Europe added 3 times more vehicles, but had 5 times fewer victims. On the other hand, Africa, with only 2 percent of the word vehicles, has the highest road fatality rate in the world.

The meeting is convened under the theme of “The 2030 horizon for road safety: securing a decade of action and delivery”, as agreed by Member States in General Assembly resolution 75/308.

Each year, road traffic crashes cause nearly 1.3 million preventable deaths and an estimated 50 million injuries – making it the leading killer of children and young people worldwide.

Nine of every ten road traffic deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. One of four is a pedestrian or a cyclist.