How many are killed on the roads each year?
This week, I attended a meeting at the BT Centre in central London as a guest of the Chair of the BT Ethnic Minority Network Malcolm Weston. The subject of the meeting was infrastructure. Most of the prese4ntations related to the UK but one looked at the topic from a world perspective and I was astonished by some information on road fatalities.
• Nearly 1.3 million people are killed on the world’s roads each year (that’s almost 3,600 every day)
• Up to 50 million people are injured and many remain disabled for life
• 90% of casualties from road deaths occur in developing countries
• Annual road traffic deaths are forecast to rise to 1.9 million people by 2020
• Road traffic injuries are the number one cause of death for young people worldwide
• By 2015 road traffic injuries will be the leading health burden for children over the age of five years in developing countries
• The economic cost to developing countries is at least $100 billion a year
A Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 has recently been launched.