Road safety: World should turn Moscow talk into tasks

Transport and Health ministers from all over the world will meet in Moscow next week to discuss the “Global Road Safety Programme”. Later, the UN General Assembly will declare a “Decade of Action” to turn the talk into tasks.

It’s all a bit more than an academic issue:  the world’s vehicle population is now some 800 million.  That figure is expected to rise to 1.2 billion in coming decades.  Already, the world death toll in road crashes is 1 million people per year, with a further 20 million seriously injured;  many of them permanently maimed.

In countries with the best road safety records, the ratio is less than 1 death per 10,000 vehicles per year. In places with the worst performance, the annual score is up to 100 times worse.  In Kenya, we have 50 deaths per 10,000 vehicles each year.

In much of the West, the safety record is getting better – in 2008, UK recorded its lowest overall death toll in 40 years, and the lowest rate per 10,000 vehicles… ever.  In much of the developing world, including Africa, the safety record is getting worse.

And it is the poorest cadres of those societies – pedestrians, cyclists and public transport passengers – who are the predominant victims. Children are especially vulnerable. The UN, the World Health Organisation and the World Bank, supported by other international agencies and increasingly by the transport and health chiefs of governments, have established the Global Road Safety Partnership.

Its aim is to halve the number of road deaths and injuries worldwide by 2015.  The momentum of the message has been building for nearly 20 years, through dozens of international and regional conferences which will climax with the first ever meeting of all the world’s transport and health ministers in Moscow next week. The “A Decade of Action” on road safety will start in 2010.

The landmark of Africa’s arrival in this system was a conference held in Accra, Ghana, in 2007, involving Africa’s Transport and Health ministers, who formulated a preliminary plan and pledge called the “Accra Declaration”.
In this, they resolved to:

1. Work together to stop the growing deaths and injuries on our roads.
2. Promote road safety as a health, transportation, law enforcement, education, and development priority for our nations.
3. Set and achieve measurable national targets for road safety and traffic-injury prevention in all member states to contribute to the achievement of Africa’s overall targets to reduce road fatalities by half by 2015. In this regard, member states should designate a lead agency, with legal backing and adequate and sustainable financial resources, to ensure the achievement of the targets.
4. Take necessary steps to source sustainable funding for development and management of transport infrastructure and services and work with multilateral and bilateral donors to develop road safety projects and programmes to build national road safety management capacity.
5. Strengthen pre-hospital and emergency services in order to provide timely and appropriate care to road traffic-injured patients to minimise their effects and long-term disability.
6. Mainstream road safety into new and existing road infrastructure development programmes. In this regard, convince governments to devote a percentage of their investment in infrastructure development to road safety programmes (10% is the recommended benchmark).
7. Improve the collection, management and use of data on road deaths and injuries to formulate evidence-based policies.
8. Ensure the enactment and enforcement of laws associated with driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs; inappropriate and excessive speeding; non-use of helmets; driver licensing; unroadworthy vehicles; and the use of mobile phones.
9. Implement specific education programmes among drivers with regard to safe driving, particularly on issues associated with speed.
10. Urge African countries to pay special attention to rural transport.
11. Encourage African countries to ratify and adhere to international treaties and conventions such as the Vienna Conventions on road traffic and road signs and signals.

The concepts and language don’t exactly drip with creative juices, but as a broad-brush framework it’s all welcome.  The more inspiring ideas will emerge if and when the system links international resource support with national policy and performance conditions.  In this regard they would do well to follow the maxim that: people don’t always do what’s right;  they do what pays.