Make Roads Safe

In numbers...

2009-11-25T10:30:00.000-08:00

According to the Russian organisers' official tally:
147 countries were represented in Moscow
There were 80 Ministers
21 international public organisations
150 NGOs
370 accredited media representatives
1500 delegates overall
$140 million pledged during the conference (although only $2 million of that was from a government).

I didn't have time to mention it previously, but the Unicef representative who spoke in the opening session of the conference made one of the best cases I've heard for why children are at the heart of the case for tackling road safety. Marrying together the safe systems approach with the rights of the child (and last week saw the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child) it was a thoughtful speech which echoed many of the things Kevin Watkins had said earlier in the week - I'll add the link when possible. It would be great now if Unicef and other child advocates follow through on the logic of their words. Then maybe at the next Ministerial in five years time we can take the numbers above and double them.

Reflections on Moscow

2009-11-23T11:47:00.000-08:00

Two moments stood out for me. The first was when Casey Marenge was wheeled onto the stage. Casey runs an NGO in Nairobi, and joined us in the campaign 2 years ago, when she organised a number of petition signings and lobbied Kenyan ministers and UN officials to do more for road safety. Casey is paraplegic, paralysed from the neck down, as a result of a road crash which killed two of her friends. She is matter of fact in her courage, and dynamic and eloquent in equal measure. Her arrival on the stage contrasted sharply with the boilerplate platitudes and dry statistics of some of the preceding official speakers. Casey speaks with authority and has no need to raise her voice or indulge in histrionics. It was a moving moment, and you could sense the change in mood in the vast conference hall.

The other key moment was the arrival of President Medvedev. From where I stood, right at the back of the room, this seemed like the moment when road safety finally arrived on its rightful stage. More than a thousand delegates rose as one, the banks of photographers and cameras whirred and flashed, there was a palpable energy in the room. This was some of what we had been working towards. It felt like recognition. Not on the scale of climate change in Copenhagen in a few weeks time, but a start.

3 Times

2009-11-19T21:14:00.000-08:00

Not much time to blog, but here's coverage and op-eds today from 3 'Times' from 3 different time zones.
Times (of London) http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article6922392.ece

Moscow Times

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/terrorism-on-the-roads/389866.html

Times of India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Highway-To-Hell/articleshow/5244167.cms

Watching George Robertson make his speech to the packed auditorium, shake hands with President Medvedev on the stage and sign first day covers!? with the Russian interior minister it all feels a long way from our low key launch in London three and a half years ago...

time for action?

2009-11-18T23:41:00.000-08:00

Kevin Watkins, UN development expert and former Oxfam campaigner, says road crashes are a 'one way ticket to poverty'. At our last campaign event before the Ministerial, Kevin was joined on stage by George Robertson and Michelle Yeoh to urge delegates to look beyond Moscow and be ready to take our case back to the UN to argue for the Decade of Action.

Implementation is a big theme of the event. We're thinking beyond the advocacy to getting the financial backing for specific practical measures that will save real lives. So today the FIA Foundation and IRAP signed a $10 million partnership, and a new 'Global Helmet Vaccine Initiative' was launched by the AIP Foundation, FIA Foundation and the World Bank. And at the end of the day comes news of a $125 million investment in global road safety by Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York (via his private foundation). This is the first big public health donation to road safety, a huge moment, and an exciting climax to this phase of our campaign.

Snow in Moscow

2009-11-17T10:25:00.000-08:00

It is quite beautiful to wake up to snow falling in Moscow and to see the white-covered domes of the Kremlin.

Our campaign team are here now finalising our preparations for the ministerial, which seems to have come together: around 80 ministers expected, delegates from more than 100 countries and the feeling that we're about to make a tiny bit of history...

more ministers...

2009-11-11T10:32:00.000-08:00

Albania; Chad; Chile; Finland; Guatemala; Indonesia; Italy; Latvia; Madagascar; Malaysia; Mongolia; Morocco; Nepal; Papua New Guinea; Panama; Paraguay; Philippines; Sierra Leone; Spain; Sri Lanka; Ukraine, Uruguay.

So 70 ministers altogether - not bad at all, and a good mix of regions and incomes. Plus Hollywood stars Will Smith (by video) and Michelle Yeoh (in person).

from remembrance to action

2009-11-08T03:38:00.000-08:00

Next Sunday, 15th November, is the annual World Day of Remembrance for road traffic victims. The theme this year, as the Day falls four days before the Moscow conference begins, is 'from global remembrance to global action'.

There will be events taking place all over the world. See www.wdor.org for details.

the news is also elsewhere...

2009-10-28T14:22:00.000-07:00

An apology: it seems the secret of a successful blog is relevance, entertainment value and regularity. Hopefully we meet the first criteria, possibly not always the second (given the subject matter), but in the third we have been abject! Sorry, we're just so busy doing there isn't always the time to write it too.

However, we tend not to blog here on stories that are featured elsewhere on the main Make Roads Safe website, just to avoid duplication and the risk of boring people...but there has been a lot going on so make sure you visit www.makeroadssafe.org to catch up on recent 'Decade' events in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Namibia, Moldova and the US. There's a lot of encouraging energy and activity and a real sense that governments and institutions are beginning to tune in to road safety. That's a long way from saying that they're ready to take concrete action or invest significant money - we've still a lot of work and convincing to do - but the change just in the last year or two is noticeable, and the Moscow conference is helping to drive it.

More confirmations...

2009-10-24T19:04:00.000-07:00

More ministers have confirmed their participation in Moscow. These are some of the additional countries that we know will be there...

Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Denmark, Eritrea, Fiji, France, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Jamaica, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Myanmar, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Inspecting Malaysian roads

2009-09-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

Our Make Roads Safe global ambassador has come home to Malaysia after a hectic week in the US. She is here to help launch the results of the Malaysia survey of the International Road Assessment Programme, which estimates that 30% of deaths and serious injuries could be prevented over 20 years if proposed road design improvements improvements are implemented.

The launch was well supported by the Malaysian transport minister and the deputy works minister and, although there are the usual political and bureaucratic hurdles to overcome, there seems to be real hope for a government investment in these recommendations.

Later we toured some of the roads near Kuala Lumpur which could benefit from improvements. IRAP's Asia director, Rob McInerney, pointed out the open ditches, lethal telegraph poles and dangerous junctions that are contributing to Malaysia's death toll of 6000 a year. We also visited the separate motorcycle lanes alongside dual carriageways that have helped to reduce motorcycle deaths along these stretches of road by up to 80%.

Resolution 74 approved by House of Representatives

2009-09-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

The US House of Representatives has today unanimously passed Concurrent Resolution 74, supporting the call for a Decade of Action and a 50% cut in predicted global fatalities by 2020. The resolution also calls on the Obama Administration to take a leadership role at the Moscow conference and support the goals of a Decade. Congratulations to Congressman Robert Wexler, the author and sponsor of the resolution, and Chair of the Global Road Safety Caucus in Congress, and to our own campaign director in the US, Bella Dinh Zarr, who has worked tirelessly to promote the issue across Washington D.C.

Decade debate in US House

2009-09-22T01:30:00.000-07:00

The US House of Representatives will debate our proposal for a Decade of Action tomorrow (Wed 23 Sept). Concurrent Resolution 74 'supporting the goals and ideals of a decade of action for road safety with a global target to reduce by 50 percent the predicted increase in global road deaths between 2010 and 2020' was sponsored by Democrat Congressman Robert Wexler and is co-sponsored by 45 other representatives from both parties.

Our campaign in the US has mobilised a lot of support behind this, in an effort to engage politicians and raise awareness. We'll update on any developments here.

delegation news - United States

2009-09-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has confirmed his participation in the Moscow Ministerial - good to see the US taking the meeting and the issue seriously with a cabinet-level delegation.

delegation news - India

2009-09-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

India has confirmed that its Union Minister for Transport and Highways, Kamal Nath, will participate in the Moscow conference. India's Union health minister is also expected to attend.

Today I visited the traffic police in Mumbai. Their motivated and energetic Traffic Police Commissioner, Sanjay Barve, says road fatalities in the city have fallen by half - from around 800 to 400 - in the past few years, mainly as a result of enforcing helmet wearing by motorcycle riders (similar efforts to get pillion riders wearing helmets will also be launched soon). The police have also prioritised promoting and enforcing lane discipline and tackling drink driving. More than 35,000 drivers or riders have been caught drink driving since 2007, with 15,000 of them ending up in prison. 92,000 people were fined for not wearing helmets in just a two month period in the summer of 2008.

It starts with a village

2009-09-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Good article today on road safety in Uganda from the Guardian website, drawing the connection between new/upgraded roads and rising road deaths http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/2009/sep/08/news-life .

This comes from the Guardian's development project in the village of Katine in Uganda. Supported with funding from the paper's readership, the project has, over the past couple of years, examined in minute detail the impact of aid spending on people's lives. The impact of road development on trade, access to health care and other opportunities has been an important part of this analysis, and questions about road safety have risen up the agenda since a football tournament sponsored by the Guardian in June ended in tragedy http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/2009/jun/14/football-fan-death-katine-crash . The economic context, and potential dangers, of the new road cutting through Katine is also well explored in this article by John Vidal http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/2009/apr/09/soroti-lira-juba-road .

The slogan of the Katine project is 'It starts with a village'. Perhaps a wider understanding and visibility for the vital need to build road safety into road development will also start with this village.

Early confirmations

2009-09-05T08:51:00.000-07:00

More than 30 countries have already confirmed ministerial participation in the Moscow conference. If your country doesn't appear in the list below, please redouble efforts to make sure you are represented! (It may be that your government has decided on its delegation - these are just the ones we know about).

Azerbaijan; Algeria; Angola; Bangladesh; Cambodia; Cameroon; Costa Rica; Croatia; Cuba; Gambia; Germany; Iraq; Laos; Luxembourg; Mexico; Mozambique; Nigeria; New Zealand; Norway; Oman; Pakistan; Palestine; Poland; Sao Tome and Principe; Qatar; Saudi Arabia; Seychelles; Serbia; Senegal; Sweden; Syria; Tanzania; United Kingdom; Vatican; Vietnam.

DFID gets the message

2009-08-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

“Increasing numbers of vehicles on the roads can lead to higher numbers of poor people killed or injured in road crashes. This is both a human tragedy and an enormous cost to the economy".

So says the new strategy paper from the UK Department for International Development. You can read the full document here http://www.dfid.gov.uk/About-DFID/Quick-guide-to-DFID/How-we-do-it/Building-our-common-future/ . It is another encouraging sign that road safety is entering the development mainstream.

DFID has also announced that it is joining the World Bank's Global Road Safety Facility, providing financial support for the Moscow conference to enable low income governments to attend, and sending its Minister of State, Gareth Thomas, to the conference in November.

le weekend dernier, je ne suis pas mort

2009-07-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

An uplifting campaign from France, emphasising the cost of road crashes by celebrating the deaths that have been prevented and the lives that are still being lived as a result of recent road safety improvements. According to the government 12,000 lives have been saved as traffic fatalities fell from 6,126 in 2003 to 4,275 in 2008. The characters featured are unexceptional, captured in a moment of mundane daily life. But they are alive! See http://www.les12000.fr/ for details. Politicians are always looking for a legacy. Saving the lives of thousands of your citizens isn't a bad one.

Smart investment

2009-07-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

In this time of credit crunch here's some financial advice you can trust.

Plaudits to ANZ Royal Bank for adding Michelle in a motorbike helmet to all their ATMs in Cambodia, in partnership with AIP Foundation.

WHO knows?

2009-06-17T07:10:00.000-07:00

WHO Director General Margaret Chan has launched a Global Status Report on road safety at an event in New York with mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose philanthropic foundation funded the work. You can access the full report here http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2009

Some key findings:

half of those killed on the roads are vulnerable road users (i.e. not in cars or trucks)

only around half of countries have comprehensive laws covering seat belt and helmet use

fewer than 20% of countries rate their own efforts at enforcing these rules as higher than 7/10.

The report includes information from 178 countries (covering 98% of the world's population) and provides a useful baseline from which we could measure progress if we get a Decade of Action. One obvious area for improvement is in data collection. Some of the injury statistics provided by countries for the survey paint a very optimistic picture of their own road safety situations, either by design or through significant failings in their reporting systems. So while WHO's Global Burden of Disease analysis (which models for underreporting) estimates global road deaths at just under 1.3 million, countries self-reported just 660,000 deaths for this survey. That's a big gap.

Bremner, Brown and Barack

2009-06-16T23:20:00.000-07:00

A reminder that promoting road safety doesn't have to be all doom and gloom came today with a comic turn by Rory Bremner at the UK launch of our 'Call for a Decade of Action' at the House of Commons. The impressionist and political satirist brought Gordon Brown and Barack Obama to the podium in support of the campaign (although it might be best if they don't read the transcript) and took advantage of the presence of racing world champion Lewis Hamilton to take a detour through the F1 cost cutting imbroglio. But he finished on message, with a serious and moving plea for action which seemed to impress the audience of MPs, staffers and Hamilton autograph hunters.

If you haven't seen Rory in action check this out from his TV show http://www.wikio.co.uk/video/1259032 . We won't be posting a video of his performance at our launch for reasons of self-preservation.

Another statistic...but reasons to hope

2009-06-09T08:55:00.001-07:00

We came upon the crash scene on the dual carriageway just outside Phnom Penh airport. A smashed and twisted motorcycle, a tuktuk on its side. On the verge a woman sat rocking back and forth in silence, while a man pumped his hands against the chest of a prone body lying in the grass, someone on the way to becoming another statistic. Traffic weaved around the wreckage, edging past the crowd of onlookers.

At least four people are killed every day on the roads of Cambodia, a country of only 14 million. We were here to launch the Call for a Decade of Action for Road Safety, at a 'Helmets for Kids' event organised by the AIP Foundation. The campaign received enthusiastic support from the education minister, the transport ministry, the national road safety committee and the police. Organisations like Handicap International and the Red Cross are here working hard on road safety, and there is much to do. Poor infrastructure, low levels of enforcement, little evidence of helmet wearing. But I'm told by those who know that people in the government are committed to improving road safety, and the Cambodian transport minister has already agreed to come to the Moscow Conference. With political engagement, strong NGO support and the example of Vietnam's helmet success across the border, Cambodia is the kind of country that could really benefit from the increased focus, attention and resourcing a Decade of Action might bring.

One death, many tragedies

2009-06-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

At the recent launch of our new Make Roads Safe report in Rome, we worked with Fleet Forum to bring a range of development NGOs round the table including Oxfam, World Vision, and Interaction, plus some of the big UN agencies operating fleets. The aim was to discuss their exposure to road injuries, both for employees driving and travelling on often dangerous roads and for the vulnerable people they are working in the poorest countries to help, and how fleet safety can be improved. And we also discussed road safety as a development issue - how poor road safety impacts on provision of health services, how it disrupts education, and imposes often unbearable financial burdens on families struggling above and below the poverty line.

So it is interesting to read this http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=275 by Oxfam's Head of Research, Duncan Green. This kind of terrible story, and the appalling waste of potential and humanity it represents is happening all too often. It's not just a tragedy for Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem's friends, family and colleagues, but also a setback for the hundreds of thousands of mothers-to-be for whom he was working to improve ante-natal care, a micro example of how neglect of road safety can seriously damage other agendas and delivery of the MDGs.

Moscow website launched

2009-05-01T02:55:00.000-07:00

The Russian Government has launched the official website for the Moscow road safety conference, http://www.1300000.net/ (the number of people killed on the roads each year). So momentum is starting to build up. We're launching a major new report next week in Rome which will set out the Make Roads Safe campaign's agenda for Moscow. And as we pick up speed over the coming six months we'll blog more regularly too...

The 262,000 child question...

2008-12-10T06:19:00.000-08:00

An excellent new report on childhood injury has been published by WHO and Unicef. Key findings - road crashes are the single largest cause of injury death (more than a fifth of the total) for children and young people under 19, with 262,000 deaths estimated in 2004. The report http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/child/injury/world_report/en/index.html makes vital reading.

At the launch in Hanoi today the Unicef director in Vietnam made the good point that his agency and others have been concentrating so hard on infant and childhood diseases that they've largely ignored child injury - an approach he is keen to see change. That change has to come from within, and the participation from the Unicef side (WHO sent a deputy Director General and the Director of Injury Prevention) was disappointing. So top marks for producing a powerful report, but now it would be great to see the evidence having an impact on priorities.