PRESS BRIEFING ON ROAD, TRAFFIC SAFETY

PRESS BRIEFING ON ROAD, TRAFFIC SAFETY

With the likelihood that deaths on roads could jump 80 per cent over the next 15 years -- outstripping HIV and tuberculosis to rank third among the leading causes of premature death and disability worldwide -– the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) today urged governments, highway safety officials, law enforcement agencies and car manufacturers to confront the phenomenon “like any other illness” and to think about traffic deaths as preventable deaths.

“Clearly, this a very serious public-health issue, particularly for less developed countries”, WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook said during a press conference held at Headquarters to raise awareness about the health, social and economic losses caused by traffic fatalities and injuries.  Such losses could be prevented by enforcing seat-belt and child-restraint laws, promoting the use of daytime running lights, and, even more importantly, by setting policies that promoted safer vehicles, safer traffic management and safer road design, he added.

Mr. Jong-wook spoke to correspondents this afternoon following the General Assembly’s unanimous adoption of a resolution which invited the World Health Organization to spearhead United Nations and worldwide efforts to establish road safety standards, particularly in developing countries, where the costs of traffic fatalities and injuries was nearly twice the total development aid they received.  Mr. Jong-wook said WHO was honoured to receive the Assembly’s call to action and was prepared to face the “daunting challenge” of coordinating efforts to ensure that road traffic injury prevention and mitigation were given the same attention and scale of resources paid to other prominent health issues.

Saying that new statistics revealed the depth of the problem, he referred to a just-released joint WHO/World Bank report which notes that some 1.2 million people died annually -– 3,000 or so every day -- on the world’s roads, and 20 to 50 million more were injured or disabled.  The “World Report on Traffic Injury Prevention”, launched in Paris last week on World Health Day, goes on to note that traffic accidents were the second leading cause of death among people aged 5 to 29 and the third leading cause of death among people between the ages of
30 and 44 years old.

Mr. Jong-wook said the issue must be tackled in a comprehensive manner.  Governments needed to have the political will to provoke changes in behaviour and create policies and safety legislation that would lead to change, and international agencies, the donor community and non-governmental organizations needed to join those efforts.  He stressed that the private sector also had an important role to play in ensuring global road safety.  He added that WHO would take such an inclusive approach when it took up its coordinating role under the Assembly’s resolution.

Joining the WHO Chief today was Jeffrey Runge, Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, of the United States Department of Transportation.  He too stressed the notion that road traffic injury was a disease.  It had epidemiological dimensions –- populations at risk, even seasonal variations –- and like any other was predictable and, therefore, preventable.  The economic burdens of the injuries and deaths were heaviest for poor nations, he added.

While noting that, in the United States, the number of traffic fatalities had dropped from 5.5 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles travelled to 1.5 deaths since the 1960s, there were still problems that needed to be addressed.  In order to reduce those numbers further, the United States would have to rededicate itself to closely examining the relationships between and road infrastructure, vehicle safety and human behaviour.  He said counter measures in the United States were based on solid data.  Here he stressed that developing countries sorely needed help in acquiring good, concrete information to help them not only determine how many fatalities occurred, but where and under what circumstances.

Also on the panel today was Karla Gonzalez, Adviser to Costa Rica’s Minister for Transportation and Special Works, who said that her country’s success in reversing the alarming trend of traffic casualties and injuries over the past four years had largely been due to joint government and civil society efforts.  Costa Rica had learned that political will must be joined with technical capacity-building and assistance on issues such as road safety enhancements and traffic regulations.

She added that diverse government agencies, including the ministries of culture, education and transportation had all worked together to help launch the campaign.  With civic actors working at the community level, her country had kicked off a campaign promoting seat-belt use and, just yesterday, legislation had been passed making it obligatory to use seat-belts.  While those types of initiatives were making a huge difference in Costa Rica, she urged the wider international community to adopt and adhere to road safety norms and standards.

Asked if she was promoting specific programmes or policies, Ms. Gonzalez said that there was no single “magic formula” to ensuring road safety or reducing traffic fatalities and injuries.  Success would come from broad cooperation on safety and prevention measures, and constant monitoring and surveillance to ensure they were being implemented.  “This is a global task, and civil society must work with governments inside each country, every day to make it sustainable”, she said.

Picking up that thread, Mr. Runge drew attention to the guidelines for joint action listed in the report, including the presence of a central agency to manage traffic safety rules and regulations, and a dedicated funding source.  He also agreed that all successful initiatives began with an educational or cultural shift towards understanding that road deaths and injuries were preventable deaths.

Responding to one reporter, who wondered if more attention should be focused on the responsibility of auto manufacturers and designers, Mark Rosenberg, Executive Director of the non-profit public-health agency Task Force for Child Survival and Development, stressed that worldwide vehicle malfunctions were often not the major cause of injuries and deaths.  In fact, in developing countries, most of the people who were killed were walking by the roadside or riding bicycles.  So it was not necessarily defects in the cars that were the problem, but roadways that were “unforgiving”, where you had mothers walking with their children or carrying groceries in the same lanes used by trucks and buses.

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