Citation

Job RFS. J. Australas. Coll. Road Saf. 2018; 29(3): 65-69.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Australasian College of Road Safety)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

The United Nations (UN) Global Plan for the Decade of Action (UNRSC, 2011) set a target of a 50% reduction in deaths by 2020 compared with the projected increase, and the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.6 is a 50% absolute reduction in both deaths and injuries by 2020. Based on performance to the end of 2016, neither target will be met. It is critical for global road safety that an SDG for road safety with a target date of 2030 be set, so that the now somewhat increased focus on the problem at the highest global levels (including the creation of the UN Fund for Road Safety in April 2018) is not lost. Rather than decreases in deaths during the current decade, the global road safety crisis is deepening. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently released the estimate of global deaths (based on analysis which will be fully published late in 2018) at 1.34 million deaths in 2016, an increase on the 1.25 million in 2013 (WHO, 2015). Extrapolating this increase and cumulating the numbers reveal the alarming outcome that from 2018 to 2030 (when the anticipated next road safety decade will end) humanity will suffer 21.7 million deaths and 875 million injuries on the world's roads: the level of trauma of another world war.



Key Findings • The global road safety crisis is deepening, and global targets for 2020 will not be met.

• Speed management is a critical lower cost solution with less delay to realisation of benefits than other elements of safe system management.

• Effective speed management is often resisted in make-or-break political decision making.

Keywords Speed management, speed cameras, speed limits, communication, political decision making.

Language: en