THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE URGENCY OF ACTION ON ROAD TRAFFIC INJURY
COVID-19, THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE URGENCY OF ACTION ON ROAD TRAFFIC INJURY The Commonwealth Road Safety Initiative highlights the fact that Commonwealth countries lose more than half a million people a year in road traffic crashes.
Rt Hon. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, KT, GCMG is Chairman of the FIA Foundation, a UK charity working globally on road safety and sustainable mobility. A former Secretary-General of NATO and UK Defence Secretary, he is a Member of the UK House of Lords. He was previously a Member of the UK House of Commons for Hamilton in Scotland from 1978 to 1997.
COVID-19 has upset many plans for 2020, including the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) summit in Kigali, Rwanda, now postponed. The pandemic has also provided urgent lessons for governments, not least the essential need for international cooperation on health issues; and the vital interconnections between health and a multitude of other policy areas: economy, trade, security, migration, climate, environment and transport. When Commonwealth leaders do eventually reassemble in Kigali, they will be faced with a political landscape transformed. Economic shock has been immense. We do not yet know how badly the virus will have impacted Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia and must hope that the worst is avoided. But it is clear that health systems will remain under huge pressure for some time, and that the need for economic stimulus will lead countries to prioritise major infrastructure investment. In many African countries and in India, this will continue to mean roads are built and upgraded. So it is urgent and important that when Commonwealth Heads of Government do gather another health epidemic, road traffic injury, is also addressed. It is a global scourge which kills and maims on an industrial, warlike, scale. We should of course avoid glib comparisons between highly contagious diseases and man-made killers, but some
context is perhaps useful. The 200,000 or more lives taken by COVID-19 at the time of writing (end of April 2020) is roughly equivalent to the death toll on the world’s roads every 8 weeks in normal times. In ‘normal’ times, because there is an acceptance of the normality of road traffic trauma which has blunted the demand for action and saps any fleeting political or donor interest. Yet it should not be normal that Commonwealth countries lose more than half a million people a year in road traffic crashes. It should not be acceptable that, in ‘normal’ times, up to 40% of ICU admissions in Tanzania are for trauma, of which road traffic injury represents the lions share. It should not be a continuing reality that roads are still being built or ‘upgraded’ across Africa, India, the Caribbean and elsewhere in the Commonwealth that are, for want of a better description, ‘designed for death’, usually because of increased vehicle speed and neglect of local community needs. Commonwealth leaders need to address this because it is in many of their countries, particularly in Africa, where a growing youth population, rapid urbanisation and dramatic motorisation could combine to herald a new and deadly chapter of the road carnage. Road traffic injury is already the world’s number one cause of death for children and young people between the ages of 5 and 29. Today, more than
134 | The Parliamentarian | 2020: Issue Two | 100 years of publishing 1920-2020
60% of the Commonwealth’s combined population is under the age of thirty. We see the predictions that cities like Lagos and Nairobi could double in size by 2030. These new urban populations will be young, mobile and at risk on the road. Now is the time to put in place measures that will protect them. The COVID-19 emergency enables us to see the world around us through a different lens. As the traffic has receded, we can see just how much public space is taken up by motor vehicles. The requirements of physical distancing have given new emphasis to the needs of pedestrians and cyclists and
“The COVID-19 emergency enables us to see the world around us through a different lens. As the traffic has receded, we can see just how much public space is taken up by motor vehicles. The requirements of physical distancing have given new emphasis to the needs of pedestrians and cyclists and shown how poor is the hand they are too often dealt.”
