Make Roads Safe

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Make Roads Safe is a global road safety campaign established with the aim of securing political commitment for road traffic injury prevention around the world. The Make Roads Safe campaign recently played a leading role in arguing for and securing the first ever United Nations Ministerial Conference on global road safety, which was approved by the UN General Assembly on 31st March 2008 and will be held in Moscow in late 2009.

The campaign was launched in June 2006 following the publication of the Make Roads Safe report by the Commission for Global Road Safety. The Commission, chaired by former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, with members including Michael Schumacher, made recommendations for increasing funding levels for global road safety and argued that the international community was ignoring the scale of road deaths – which World Health Organisation statistics show as ranking alongside Malaria and Tuberculosis in terms of global mortality.

The Make Roads Safe campaign is coordinated by the FIA Foundation, a road safety NGO, and includes a coalition of public health and road safety organisations as partners. The campaign aims to raise public awareness of the scale of the road injury problem and to present this as a key issue for sustainable development. The Make Roads Safe campaign argues that tackling road injuries is vital for achieving many of the Millennium Development Goals, including targets for child mortality and health and education targets, because of the vital role played by access to roads in delivering these services. The campaign claims that, although the G8 has approved $1.2 billion for new road infrastructure in Africa, only $20 million has been allocated for road safety measures. The campaign argues that at least 10% of this infrastructure budget, and the similar budgets deployed worldwide by the World Bank, regional development banks and other donors, should be dedicated to road safety measures. If this principle was accepted in the case of Africa it would mean $120 million would be available for road safety measures such as safety assessments of road design, enforcement and education strategies. However critics point to the bad environmental and equity record of the same groups in the OECD, giving priority to motorcars over more sustainable and safe forms of transport, like walking, cycling and public transport

The Make Roads Safe campaign also calls for a $300 million, 10 year, Action Plan for road safety to build the capacity of developing countries to respond to their own road traffic injury problems.

1 Make Roads Safe report
2 Supporters
3 International objectives
4 Online campaigning
5 Criticism
6 See also
7 External links
8 Notes

[edit] Make Roads Safe report

The Commission for Global Road Safety’s report: Make Roads Safe – a new priority for sustainable development, published in June 2006, made a series of recommendations for improving the international response to global road traffic injuries. Building on the policy platform provided by the seminal 2004 publication from the World Health Organisation and the World Bank, the World Report on road traffic injury prevention, the Make Roads Safe report focused on ways in which funding to road injury prevention could be increased. The main arguments of the report were that road traffic injuries were a major and growing public health epidemic, on the scale of Malaria and TB – according to WHO figures; that the cost to developing countries in human lives and economic loss (estimated at up to $100 billion a year by the World Bank) required urgent attention and that failing to address road safety in the context of development policies (particularly relating to road infrastructure investment) would impede progress towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

The report set out three key recommendations aimed at increasing political commitment and investment in road safety:

a $300 million Action Plan, over ten years, to equip developing countries with the sustainable tools to tackle their own road safety problems and to be able to access multilateral sources of funding for road safety;
a requirement that a minimum 10% of all multilateral donor road infrastructure budgets should be allocated to road safety measures;
a ministerial level UN summit to chart a course for international cooperation on road traffic injury prevention.

The Make Roads Safe report was endorsed by an Advisory Board including officials, acting in a personal capacity, from the World Bank, OECD, WHO, Asian Development Bank and United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. At the launch, in London, Lord Robertson summarised the findings of the report: ‘to Make Poverty History we must Make Roads Safe’.

[edit] Supporters

More than a hundred organisations worldwide are supporting the Make Roads Safe campaign to date, including the Taskforce for Child Survival and Development, based in Atlanta, Georgia; the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, the Asia Injury Prevention Foundation, based in Vietnam; and the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the governing body of world motor sport and the worldwide federation of automobile clubs. Other international partners include Safe Kids Worldwide, US injury NGO Amend.org, Fleet Forum and Bridgestone Corporation. In the UK supporters include the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), ROADSAFE, Roadpeace, Living Streets (the Pedestrians Association), the RAC Foundation, the Parliamentary Advisory Committee on Transport Safety (PACTS), the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) and Transaid, a development NGO focusing on transport. In India, the Institute for Road Traffic Education (IRTE), a major Indian road safety NGO, and Indian automobile clubs are supporting the campaign. In South Africa both the AA of South Africa and road safety NGO Drive Alive are active supporters of the campaign. Road safety NGOs in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda have also been active in support of the campaign. The European Federation of Road Traffic Victims (FEVR)has also added its support. In the United States organisations endorsing the campaign include the Association for Safe International Travel (ASIRT), the American Public Health Association, the American Automobile Association (AAA), the National Organisation for Youth Safety (NOYS), Mothers Against Drink Driving (MADD) and the National Road Safety Foundation. National campaigns and activities in support of Make Roads Safe are being run in many countries by automobile clubs and road safety NGOs.

Political and public figures who have offered their support for the aims of the campaign include former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who launched the campaign in Africa at an event in Cape Town in May 2007, and former US Transportation Secretary, Norman Mineta. In September 2006 President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica endorsed a key aim of the campaign when he signed a Decree requiring at least 10% of road infrastructure investment in Costa Rica to be allocated to road safety. In an Op-Ed article for the Washington Post on 9th September 2006, President Arias called on regional development banks to follow this lead, and also urged support for the proposed $300 Global Road Safety Action Plan proposed in the Make Roads Safe report. In March 2008 Desmond Tutu was joined by Jimmy Carter, Sonia Gandhi, Mary Robinson, and President Arias in signing an open letter to the United Nations on behalf of the Make Roads Safe capaign, calling for urgent action to tackle global road deaths.

Asian film star Michelle Yeoh became a global ambassador for the campaign in 2008, participating in an awareness raising trip to Vietnam, where she campaigned for children to wear motorcycle helmets, and speaking at a press conference at the UN in New York.-->

[edit] International objectives

The campaign achieved one of its key objectives in March 2008 with the passage of a strong United Nations resolution on global road safety at the UN General Assembly, including approval of the first ever global Ministerial conference on road safety. To promote this objective, the Make Roads Safe campaign collected a million strong petition which was personally delivered to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon by campaign chairman George Robertson on 31st March 2008.

The campaign was launched in June 2006, just prior to the G8 summit in St Petersburg. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, together with Max Mosley, President of the FIA, held meetings with senior Russian government officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov to impress on them the need for G8 governments to include consideration of road safety in the context of progress on development in Africa, particularly because infrastructure had been a major theme of the Gleneagles G8 in 2005. Then British Prime Minister Tony Blair offered his support for inclusion of road safety in a future G8 communique in a letter to Lord Robertson, a position endorsed by then UK development Secretary Hilary Benn MP. The campaign is working to influence G8 countries through contacts with Governments and through involvement in policy processes, such as the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa, SSATP and NEPAD. The Make Roads Safe campaign is also seeking to influence United Nations agencies, the development banks and development NGOs to recognise the scale of the road injury epidemic facing developing countries. The first United Nations Global Road Safety Week (23-29 April 2007) provided a major platform for promoting the messages of the campaign and raising general awareness of the scale of road injury worldwide.

[edit] Online campaigning

The Make Roads Safe campaign is running an online petition via its website which supporters can sign up to. Organisations and companies are also encouraged to sign up via the website. The campaign sells t-shirts, wristbands and campaign badges via the website.

[edit] Criticism

Some critics have argued that this initiative is car-centric, and does not focus on the problems inherent in the way road traffic is organised today. They say representatives for the environmentally benign and healthy forms of transport, are not represented in the board, nor has advice and knowledge about those modes of transport been heeded. The Make Roads Safe campaign has responded to this criticism by arguing that the main beneficiaries of a greater focus on road safety and safer infrastructure design will be vulnerable road users (including pedestrians and cyclists) who are the victims of the majority of road injuries in developing countries. Billions of dollars are being invested in new and upgraded road infrastructure in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Make Roads Safe campaign argues that this development aid should be invested with the safety and mobility needs of all road users in mind. To advance this agenda the Make Roads Safe campaign is helping to organise a conference in July 2008 bringing together representatives of the main development banks and other key donors to try to persuade them to address road safety and a sustainability agenda more systematically in their road infrastructure design and management.

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