Road safety in Britain evokes Tufty, and accelerates page-turning. Is this really still an issue? The charity RoadPeace this year reported the number of people killed or seriously injured in 2008 was 40% below the 1994-98 average – and reaching the Department for Transport 2010 target reduction. Result, surely. But statistics mask reality. On an average day last year, seven people died on the roads. Each and every day. The total number of people either killed or seriously injured was 28,572. For their families and communities affected, 2008 was ghastly.
Now take an international perspective: the latest figures tell us that every day, 700 children are killed on the world's roads. That's 255,500 children killed every year. I am sobered beyond inaction by these figures. Add adults, and the death toll rises to 1.3 million. Once you reach millions, individuality recedes – so facts must take the strain: 90% of those deaths occur in developing world countries.
Each road death is complemented by 40-50 injuries, many of them permanently disabling. In societies where insurance is not a norm, this instantly impoverishes families, and the knock-on effect has a substantive effect on national GDP. It is estimated that low-income countries are losing 2-4% of GDP as a direct consequence of road injuries and deaths, which both equals the effects of the current global recession and outweighs any advantage these countries gain from aid.
Hence, the World Trade Centre in Moscow is hosting the first ever UN global ministerial conference on road safety. At the conference, delegates from 150 countries – many from the lowest-income economies such as Afghanistan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and Pakistan – are spending two days debating and agreeing best practice in the crucial areas of traffic laws and enforcement (where Rwanda is scoring well), behaviour (wearing crash helmets when riding scooters or bicycles, for instance – and not drinking alcohol before taking to the wheel) and resource management: we know, for instance, that over half of every trauma unit's beds in the developing world are taken by road traffic injury sufferers; how do we address this economy-draining reality?
Above all, road building should automatically include a significant safety factor, and be funded by the world's banks accordingly. Crossing Moscow's teeming roads would be impossible without the underpasses, but tens of thousands of six-lane highways have been or are being built around the world with neither underpasses nor bridges – never mind safety barriers – thereby forcing pedestrians young and old to "play chicken" simply to get to school or work.
Trading experience in tandem with allocating funds represents civilisation. This week is about sharing, to the greater good. Delegates are due to sign up to the Moscow Declaration calling for the UN general assembly to declare 2011-20 the "decade of action for road safety", with the goal of reducing the forecast level of global road deaths and injuries. If the declaration is adopted it could save 5 million lives and prevent 50 million serious injuries. The fact that the UN now sees this as a matter of active concern is important. I met Lord Robertson here, who for some years has chaired the Global Road Safety Commission, and is speaking to the conference. He said: "The latest figures show that around 45,000 folk are killed on American roads every year. Imagine if that were in the air – nobody would fly any more."
The people of the world need roads – and they need to know how best to use them, on foot, bicycle, scooter and behind the wheel.