Road Safety for All: A Step towards a Sustainable Future

By:Anna Kathleen Lim

Ours is an age of complexity, contradiction, and challenge. As the decade ends, a new beginning awaits,
along with that are new challenges for humanity begin to emerge. However, few challenges from the
past remains unsolved.

For the past decade, teenage deaths have been alarming, yet what's more surprising is that the number
one killer of teenagers doesn't have a trigger, it has a steering wheel. In the past few years, Road Traffic
Crash Injuries remain as the leading cause of death among ages 15-29. Statistics from the World Health
Organization (WHO) from years 2000-2018 have shown that an average of 1.35 million people die each
year as a result of road traffic crashes, while an approximate of 500 lives of children, ages 5-19 years old,
die each day due to road crash. This enormous numbers caught the attention of leaders worldwide,
calling them for an action for this global issue.

Developing an objective approach to take decisions aiming at reducing the numbers of injuries and
damages inflicted by road traffic incidents has become a top global priority since then. United Nations
General Assembly last September 2015 adressed issues worldwide and later on approved the 17
Sustainable development Goals (SDG) which aims to " meet the needs of the present, without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". These goals included the aim
to ensure development of Road traffic safety systems to support Decade of Action for Road Safety
2011-2020, which was established last UN General Assembly 2010.

The SDG included the initiative targets that address road safety: SDG target 3.6 on halving the number of
global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents; and SDG target 11.2 on providing access to safe,
affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems as well as improve road safety for all because
road safety isn't just measured based on the indicators such as number of injuries and casualties, but to
the feeling of being safe in the road system and to the reliability that the user will not be severely
injured or killed in that system. This feeling and reliability in the system are key features for promoting
more sustainable ways of transportation in the cities, such as walking and cycling, which are linked to
more liveable cities.

Several strategies of developing the road traffic safety were adapted worlwide, including the Haddon
Matrix which focus on the mitigation on road crash based factors, Human, Vehicle and Equipment, and
Road Environment on different phases. Policies were established on National Government and policies
on manufacturing motors were strengthened yet Road safety still remains a challenge.

The current UN Decade of Action for Road Safety, despite the growth in population and individual
motorisation, has helped slow down the increase in road death, however, in far too many nations, the
numbers of road-related deaths remain unacceptably high and the aim of halving the numbers of road-
related deaths and injuries (SDG 3.6) is not currently on course to be met says Michelle Bachelet, UN
High Commisioner on Human Rights, despite the movements these past years. Thus, a new strategy
entitled ‘A Partnership for Safer Journeys,’ was launched on 28 February 2019, at both UN
Headquarters in New York, US, and at the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva,
Switzerland.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the strategy will guide UN organizations in developing a
new approach towards safer journeys. Peter Drennan,Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security,
explained that the strategy is “a game changer” being the first time the UN brings a coordinated
approach to road safety across the organization. 

The UN Road Safety Strategy is based on a “safe-system approach” that manages the interaction
between speed, vehicles, road infrastructure and road-user behavior to prevent crashes from resulting
in deaths and serious human injury. The strategy is made up of five pillars: road safety management;
safer fleets; safer road users; post-crash response; and creating safer driving environments.