FIA supports UN global road safety summit

The FIA has welcomed the United Nations decision to hold the first ever global Ministerial summit on road safety. The move follows the Make Roads Safe campaign’s calls for a global programme to reduce the rapidly growing death toll on the world’s roads.

The FIA and its member clubs have played a key role in supporting the Make Roads Safe campaign helping to gather 1 million signatures which were submitted this week to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York. The first UN road safety summit will be held in the Russian Federation in 2009.

The Make Roads Safe campaign will continue to promote its agenda for action in the run-up to the UN Ministerial conference, including:

• Calling on the international community to fund, at minimum, a 10 year, $300 million, action plan to increase road safety capacity in middle and low income countries;

• To ensure that 10% of road infrastructure budgets funded by international donors should be earmarked for safety.

During the General Assembly session, the UN heard that road deaths are now the number one killer of young people aged 10-24 worldwide. Overall, each year more than1.2 million people are killed and 50 million injured. The latest forecasts show that unless action is taken, more than twenty million lives could be lost from 2000-2015, with a doubling of the annual death rate by 2030.