UN Decade of Action for Road Safety

 

  • A Decade of Action - why?

Wednesday 11th May 2011 marked the beginning of the Decade for Action for Road Safety. The work on the decade is being coordinated by the World Health Organisation on behalf of the United Nations.

90% of road traffic deaths occur in low and middle income countries. For people aged between 5 and 44 years, road traffic injuries are among the three leading causes of death. Unless we take action over the next decade, an estimated 2.4 million will die every year worldwide as a result of road traffic injuries.

The Global Plan for Road Safety identifies five pillars for action at a national level: road safety management; safer roads and mobility; safer vehicles; safer road users; and post-crash response. Even if we believe that we have taken action on these in Great Britain, there is still more for us to do to develop a systemic approach to managing risk on our roads.

The Decade also reminds us of our international responsibilities. Britain can help other countries by sharing expertise and knowledge. The Decade offers us an opportunity to help the world learn from our experience and not to repeat our mistakes.

PACTS will monitor and assess actions that are taken over the coming months.

For further details and how you can become involved please click on the following link www.decadeofaction.org

 

 

  • The UK Launch
Wednesday 11th May 2011, Church House, Westminster, London. 

The programme

Welcome by Robert Gifford, Executive Director of PACTS.  

The UK launched the Decade of Action for Road Safety in London on Wednesday. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Chairman of the Commission for Global Road Safety, opened the event and Philip Hammond MP, Secretary of State for Transport launched the government's Road Safety Strategic Framework. 

The following presentations were given:

Driving for Business at a multi-national level. Cliff Cheeseman, Tesco. 

The Five Pillars of the Global Plan:

 

Click here to see photos from the day. 

Over 40 UK organisations submitted commitments for the Decade of Action. 

A couple of celebrities also showed their support for the Decade. Sir Bob Geldof made a video for the UK launch. Grover of Sesame Street became a road safety ambassador for the Decade, on a mission to make the world's roads safe for children and families. He appears in three videos wearing his seatbelt, his helmet, and crossing the road safely. 

 

 

 

  • International Research

As well as encouraging and supporting the sharing of Britain's expertise and knowledge, PACTS is committed to using the Decade as an opportunity to build on existing European and international contacts and learn from experience from outside the UK.

Therefore each month PACTS will feature a publication from a different country on this page. This will also be included in the PACTS newsletter, which you can sign up for by clicking the link on the right hand side of this page.

January and February 2012: To further improve road safety, it is necessary to have a better understanding of the real number of road traffic casualties, including serious injuries. This is made possible by linking different sources of accident data, including police and hospital data. The International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) has reviewed how serious injuries are defined in IRTAD countries in this report Reporting on Serious Road Traffic Casualties, and identified and assessed methodologies for linking different sources of crash data.

December 2011: SWOV, the Institute for Road Safety Research in the Netherlands has published a report on 'Traffic offences and crashes: is there a relation?'. The report found that vehicles that commit more than one offence per year are involved in crashes more frequently than vehicles that commit one offence per year. The study also showed that this growth factor increases exponentially with the offence frequency (the number of offences per year). 

November 2011:  Ministers of health of the Americas have approved a new plan of action on road safety designed to prevent traffic injuries, the leading cause of death in children aged 5 to 14 in the hemisphere and the second-leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 44. The plan was approved during the 51st Directing Council meeting of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). It calls on countries to update legislation to address the principal risk factors of traffic injuries: excessive speed, alcohol consumption, and the use of seat belts, helmets, and child restraints. Other priority actions include promoting policies on public and nonmotorized transportation, improving pre-hospital care services for the injured and urban and road infrastructure, and encouraging industry to adopt technical inspection systems for all vehicles in circulation to ensure compliance with safety standards.

This article on naturalistic driving in Europe and USA features Rob Eenink, consortium leader of PROLOGUE - the EU FP7 feasibility study for a large scale naturalistic driving project, and Dr. Kenneth L. Campbell, Chief Programme Officer for the second Strategic Highway Research Programme.

October 2011:  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the USA has sponsered research and supported demonstration programs that have provided much of the scientific background for the growth in traffic safety legislation and safety programs including alcohol-impaired driving. Between 1968 and 2005, the national highway fatality rate fell from 5.49 to 1.45 per hundred million vehicle miles of travel (VMT). An important element of NHTSA’s support for alcohol safety research has been a series of reports on alcohol and highway safety. This is the sixth report in a series that reviews the state of knowledge on alcohol and highway safety, dating back to 1968. 

The Uganda Road Sector Support Initiative website has published a report on the recently opened Northern Bypass ('Northern Bypass turns into passage of death'). The article emphasises the difficulties for pedestrians caused by a lack of speed control measures and pedestrian crossings. It is stated that the road was part-funded by the EU.

September 2011: The Swiss Council for Accident Prevention has published 'Status 2011', which lays out road safety statistics for Switzerland.  

August 2011: This report by SWOV, the Dutch road safety institution, explores the concept of social forgiveness, where crashes can be avoided or made less severe by socially forgiving behaviour and reactions. The report, A Follow up Study into Social Forgiveness, is written in Dutch, with a summary in English. 

July 2011: In recognition of Sweden and Lithuania winning the ETSC (European Transport Safety Council) PIN awards this year, these two countries will feature throughout July. The following links illustrate activities in road safety in each country. 

The Swedish Transport Administration, Trafikverket, has published a factsheet on ISA. Speed is one of the most important factors in deciding the seriousness of an accident. But there now are effective tools to help drivers keep to the speed limit. One of these is ISA, which stands for ”Intelligent Speed Adaptation”.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications in Lithuania has invited schools to sign up for the European Road Safety Charter. The Road Administration website has a mapping feature, where visitors to the site can get information on traffic volume and accident rates for 'black spots'. 

June 2011: The first report Dangerous by Design by Transportation for America, presents arguments for making pedestrian safety a higher priority. In many locations, including 15 of the country’s largest metro areas, pedestrian fatalities have actually increased, even as overall traffic deaths fell. The report explains that wide roads designed for speed with insufficient pedestrian infrastructures are one of the main problems. 

The second report, Benefits of New and Improved Pedestrian Facilities – Before and After Studies by the New Zealand Transport Agency, compliments the first in that it too recognises both the importance of a pedestrian-friendly road environment for encouraging walking, and the associated health and environmental benefits. In evaluating the improved pedestrian facilities over a number of years, the New Zealand Transport Agency is demonstrating best practice by evaluating their interventions and supporting an evidence led approach. 

 

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