PUTTING ROAD SAFETY ON THE COMMONWEALTH AGENDA
PUTTING ROAD SAFETY ON THE COMMONWEALTH AGENDA
Jim Fitzpatrick, MP is the United
Kingdom Member of Parliament for Poplar and Limehouse in east London and he serves as the Chair of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for Transport Safety and as Parliamentary Advisor to the Commonwealth Road Safety Initiative.
Every day 3,700 people are killed in road crashes around the world. Tragically road traffic injuries are now the leading cause of death for children and young people aged 5-29 years.1 This is a major challenge for the Commonwealth as over 60% of its combined population is under 30. Promoting safety for young people is therefore a major focus of the recently launched Commonwealth Road Safety Initiative (CRSI) which, under the patronage of HRH Prince Michael of Kent, is developing a framework for joint action on road injury prevention aiming to halve road deaths and serious injuries by 2030. The 53 countries of the Commonwealth record over 212,000 traffic deaths every year but according to World Health Organisation estimates, the number of fatalities exceeds 500,000 when adjusted for under reporting.2 Across the Commonwealth levels of road injury differ enormously. Fatality rates in road crashes range from 3 per 100,000 population in the best performing countries to above 30 in the worst. However, in nearly all Commonwealth countries fatality and injury rates are rising rather than falling. This is very disappointing given that road safety is now included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for both health and cities (SDGs 3.6 & 11.2). The Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) meeting in London last year ‘reiterated their commitment to achieving the health-related goals of Agenda 2030, particularly Goal 3’, so stronger efforts to tackle the growing scourge of road injury especially among young people is now an urgent necessity. Parliamentarians across the
242 | The Parliamentarian | 2019: Issue Three | 100th year of publishing
Commonwealth have a key role to play to reduce the epidemic of road deaths that cause so much avoidable human misery and unnecessary economic losses. We can help to formulate effective national road safety policies and legislation; we can support adequate levels of funding for road injury prevention; we can ensure accountability of governments and public authorities to meet road safety targets; and we can engage with the community to help make roads safe for all those we were elected to serve. The challenge in many Commonwealth countries today is to apply basic road safety laws; for example, to wear seat belts, use motorcycle helmets, to prevent drink driving, and to enforce them effectively. Minimum safety standards are also required for both used and new vehicles. Better road design and management must also prioritise the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists. This is especially important as vulnerable road users including motorcyclists now account for over half of global road traffic deaths. To encourage a new level of Commonwealth commitment to effective road injury prevention the CRSI has brought together a distinguished panel of road safety experts to set out an agenda for action aiming to halve deaths and serious injuries from road crashes
by 2030. The CRSI’s report to be released in December 2019 will strongly endorse the World Health Organization’s ‘Save LIVES: road safety technical package’ an evidence-based inventory of priority interventions with a focus on speed management, leadership, infrastructure design and improvement, vehicle safety standards, enforcement of traffic laws and post-crash survival.3 Experience shows that if countries take decisive action to implement the WHO’s Save LIVES recommendations significant injury reduction will follow. In February 2020, the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety will be held in Stockholm, Sweden4 to assess current progress in road safety and set new priorities for 2030. This will be followed by a UN special General Assembly debate on road safety that will adopt a resolution based on the outcome of the Stockholm conference.5 These important events next year will provide a new mandate for global road safety. But they also give Commonwealth countries an opportunity to reassess their own road injury prevention priorities and take on a global leadership role. The Commonwealth has a justified reputation in promoting effective collaboration as was highlighted at the 2018 CHOGM