By Nicholas Worrell, Chief, Safety Advocacy Division
Around the world, about 1.25 million people lose their lives every year in motor vehicle crashes. That’s roughly the entire population of Dallas, Texas. Others—20–50 million—are injured or disabled. That’s about the equivalent of injuring everybody in a medium-sized country, like Spain (46 million) or Ukraine (44 million).
May is Global Youth Traffic Safety Month (GYTSM), and May 6–12, 2019, marks the Fifth United Nations Global Road Safety Week. These events draw attention to the need for stronger road safety leadership to help achieve a set of global goals. International governments have set an ambitious goal to reduce by half the number of deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents globally by 2020.
On behalf of the NTSB, during this GYTSM, I’ll join with advocates and road safety experts from around the world to launch action through the ongoing campaign “Save Lives—#SpeakUp.” The campaign “provides an opportunity for civil society to generate demands for strong leadership for road safety, especially around concrete, evidence‑based interventions.” From May 8 to 10, I’ll also have the opportunity to speak to an audience of public transportation agencies from throughout the Caribbean region, as well as road transportation professionals and academics from around the world, at the 8th annual Caribbean Regional Congress of the International Road Federation in Georgetown, Guyana. As a Caribbean native, I am especially looking forward to discussing the NTSB’s lessons learned, recommendations, and advocacy efforts with professionals there.
One of the big messages I hope to get across is that ending road crashes and their resulting injuries and fatalities worldwide will require a cultural shift, and that shift must begin with young people, who are more likely to die in a motor vehicle crash than any other age group. More people between the ages of 15 and 29 lose their lives in crashes than from HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and homicide combined. GYTSM is a time to encourage this demographic to take the mantel and fight to change those statistics.
To learn more about our work in support of Global Youth Traffic Safety Month read some of our past NTSB blog posts https://safetycompass.wordpress.com/?s=global+youth+traffic+safety+month.
Would you like to add your voice to the conversation happening this week around Global Road Safety Week? Join the Youth For Road Safety global youth Twitter chat on Friday, May 10, 2019, from 15:00–16:00 GMT (10:00–11:00 EST), follow @Yours_YforRS and use the hashtag #SpeakUpForRoadSafety.
NTSB Safety Compass Blog 