By Jamal Saghir and - -
WASHINGTON, Apr 23 2007 (IPS)

Each year, road traffic accidents kill more than one million people; another 50 million people are injured. Three-quarters of the casualties live in poor countries, thus affecting the most vulnerable groups such as pedestrians and cyclists. Globally, health losses from road traffic crashes over the next 20 years could jump well ahead of those from malaria or tuberculosis, writes Jamal Saghir, World Bank Director for Energy, Transport, and Water Strong leadership is needed to change the present situation. Road networks are complex systems which are inherently hazardous and must be managed and designed to compensate for human fallibility. Improving road safety in the developing world is a shared responsibility between government, industry, non-governmental organizations and international agencies. This effort faces the challenge of an implied fatalism suggesting that countries seeking economic growth must accept the inevitability of increased deaths and injuries on their roads. But this suggestion has worn thin as the bodies pile up on the roads and crash survivors begin their new lives disadvantaged by injury.

Each year, road traffic accidents kill more than one million people; another 50 million people are injured. Three-quarters of the casualties live in poor countries, thus affecting the most vulnerable groups such as pedestrians and cyclists. Globally, health losses from road traffic crashes over the next 20 years could jump well ahead of those from malaria or tuberculosis.

The United Nations has declared the week from April 23-29 as the first international Road Safety Week. Unfortunately, by the time the week is over, 20,000 more people will have been killed and up to a million more injured on the worlds roads.

All regions of the world are affected and will continue to be. By 2020, East Asia and the Pacific, led by China, will suffer around 340,000 road deaths a year. South Asia will experience almost a 150 percent growth rate in road deaths over the same time period, with India bearing the greatest burden. Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe and Central Asia all will all experience significant increases in fatalities.

The economic cost of this global catastrophe on developing economies is estimated to be up to $100 billion per year. This compares with total bilateral development assistance that, in 2005, amounted to approximately $106 billion. Road deaths are already the fourth leading cause of death for people aged 15-59 years in low and middle-income countries. A gender bias is also evident: by 2030 men will suffer health losses from road deaths at a rate surpassed only by HIV/AIDS. And children are especially vulnerable: road deaths and injuries in developing countries are projected to be the leading cause of healthy life years lost by children aged 5-14 years by 2015.

With increasing motorization rates in developing countries, staving off this epidemic will be difficult. Yet preventive road safety measures such as drink-driving deterrence, safety belt usage, rigorous speed enforcement, enhanced emergency medical services, and improvements to the physical safety features of the roads themselves have been proven to work. They are critical, but unless governments also make road safety a centerpiece of their policy platform, these actions are more band-aid than cure.

Strong leadership is needed to change the present situation. Road networks are complex systems which are inherently hazardous and must be managed and designed to compensate for human fallibility. Improving road safety in the developing world is a shared responsibility between government, industry, non-governmental organizations and international agencies. This effort faces the challenge of an implied fatalism suggesting that countries seeking economic growth must accept the inevitability of increased deaths and injuries on their roads. But this suggestion has worn thin as the bodies pile up on the roads and crash survivors begin their new lives disadvantaged by injury.

Increased awareness efforts are important and they are putting pressure on decision-makers to act. Global development agencies, including the World Bank, are recognizing that road safety must become a priority.

Just as high-income nations managed environmental pollution, eradicated communicable diseases, and ensured universal primary education, so too can developing countries make tremendous strides to bring road deaths and injuries under control. Rich countries must considerably step up resource flows today in order to save millions of preventable deaths tomorrow.

For too long now, lives have been given away through this human-engineered disease in what has aptly been called a scandal of tolerance. Countries with the best road safety records took 20-30 years or more of applied effort to combat the problem. The developing world can not and need not take this long.

The alternative is to sacrifice the lives, and the quality of life, of tens of thousands of children and their parents from coming generations in developing countries. Through our collective actions we can protect them from the sheer and sudden violence of road crashes. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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