Background Information:
UN Global Road Safety Weeks are held every two years to raise attention to and action on a specific road safety challenge. They contribute to advocacy around the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030. This guiding framework reflects an ambitious target to reduce road traffic deaths and injuries by 50% by 2030.
The Global Plan highlights that road traffic deaths and injuries can be prevented by addressing the whole of the transport system, ensuring safe roads, vehicles and behaviours as well as improving post-crash emergency care.
Active safety means features or derivatives integrated into vehicle design to avoid crashes, for example brakes and advanced emergency braking system.
Child restraint (child restraint system) is a device capable of accommodating a child occupant in a sitting or supine position. It is so designed as to diminish the risk of injury to the wearer, in the event of a collision or of abrupt deceleration of the vehicle.
Emergency care system is an integrated platform for delivering accessible, quality and time-sensitive health care services for acute illness and injury across the life course. The emergency care system that delivers these services extends from care at the scene through transport and emergency unit care, and it ensures access to early operative and critical care when needed.
Equity is the absence of unfair, avoidable or remediable differences among populations or groups defined socially, economically, demographically, or geographically.
Good Samaritan Laws are laws offering legal protection to bystander(s) providing reasonable care to an injured person in an emergency situation. Good Samaritan laws are intended to reduce bystanders’ hesitation to provide assistance for fear of being sued for unintentional injury or wrongful death.
Multimodal transport planning is an integration of various modes of transport such as walking, cycling, private car, public transport and railway into transport planning. It seeks to promote complementarity and interconnection among these modes to ensure a seamless flow of people and goods from one place to another.
Lay responders or lay providers are those who are present or who arrive first at the scene of a crash.
Mobility is the ability to reach a place, which is enhanced by accessibility (the ease by which a place can be reached).
Non-motorized transport is any transport mode that does not require a motor to generate energy. Included in this term are walking, cycling, and using animal-drawn or human-drawn carts.
Passive safety is any device that automatically provides protection for the occupant of a vehicle, such as safety-belts, motorcycle helmets, child restraints, padded dashboard, bumpers, laminated windshield, head restraints, collapsible steering columns and air bags.
Post-crash care is the care delivered to injured people by trained providers, both at the scene and at health facilities, and includes effective emergency, operative and critical care.
Post-crash response is a sequence of time-sensitive actions, beginning with activation of the emergency care system, and continuing with care at the scene, care during transport, and facility-based emergency care.
Prehospital care is healthcare provided at the scene or during transfer of injured persons from the scene of a collision to a health facility.
Public transport are systems of transport consisting of services and routes that are used for travel by the general public as passengers as opposed to an individual. These group travel systems are also referred to as mass transit and high-capacity transit services in some countries. The following are the public transport modes found in different countries: buses, commuter trains, light rail, trams, subways, cable cars, taxis,
streetcars and trolleys, passenger service motorcycles and bicycles, van pool services, and ferries and water taxis.
Road traffic fatality is a death occurring within 30 days of a road traffic crash.
Road traffic injuries are fatal or non-fatal injuries incurred as a result of a road traffic crash.
Vehicle (motor vehicle) is any power-driven vehicle which is normally used for carrying persons or goods by road or for drawing on the road, vehicles used for the carriage of persons or goods. This term embraces trolleybuses, that is to say, vehicles connected to an electric conductor and not rail borne. It does not cover vehicles, such as agricultural tractors, which are only incidentally used for carrying persons or goods by road or for drawing, on the road, vehicles used for the carriage of persons or goods.
Key Messages:
Road traffic injuries are a leading cause of death and disability worldwide, with around 1.3 million people killed and as many as 50 million people injured each year.
For people aged 5-29 years, road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death.
Globally, 1 of every 4 deaths occur among pedestrians and cyclists.
WHO, in collaboration with partners, organizes periodic UN Global Road Safety Weeks. This 7th edition focuses on sustainable transport, in particular the need to shift to walking, cycling and using public transport. Road safety is both a prerequisite for and an outcome of this shift.
There is a desperate need for governments and their partners to rethink mobility.
Safety must be at the core of efforts to reimagine how we move in the world.
To ensure safety, road networks must be designed with the most at risk in mind.
When safe, walking and cycling can contribute to making people healthy, cities sustainable, and societies equitable.
Safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable public transport is a solution for many of societies’ ills.
Useful Links:
Link to WHO fact sheet on Road Traffic Injuries:
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-injuries
Link to the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030:
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