Global road safety crisis: Globally, road traffic crashes kill an estimated 1.2 million people and injure or disable up to 50 million people per year, leading to annual costs of more than US$ 500 billion. More than 90 per cent of road traffic deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Road traffic injuries are predicted to become the third largest contributor to the global burden of disease by 2020, ahead of HIV or tuberculosis. Today, road traffic injuries are already the second most important cause of death for people between 5 and 29 years of age. In this age group, young men, whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, novice drivers or passengers, are nearly three times more likely to be killed or injured on the road than young women (More global facts here | 2005 report of the UN Secretary General on the global road safety crisis (PDF)).

Road Safety in Asia and the Pacific and on the Asian Highway: The region has made great progress in road development. Last year alone around US$ 170 billion was invested on Asian roads, with more than US$ 20 billion being committed to the Asian Highway Network. However, Asia has the worst road safety record in the world. Every year, more than half a million people are killed and 20-30 million injured in road crashes, at an economic cost of some US$100 billion. While most segments of the 140,000 kilometres of the Asian Highway are safer than other roads in the region, some segments show worrying safety records. Last year, more than 19,000 persons died in over 125,000 road crashes on the Asian Highway Network. For more regional facts, see documents E/ESCAP/CMG(4/I)/7 (English, Chinese, French, Russian), document E/ESCAP/MCT/SGO/9 (English, Chinese, French, Russian), and various country reports.

Why UNESCAP? Since 2003, the UN General Assembly has adopted a series of resolutions in which it called on member countries, the World Health Organization and the regional commissions, including UNESCAP, to work together to address what it called a global road safety crisis (GA resolutions 57/309, 58/9, 58/289 and 60/5). Resolution 60/5 of 26 Oct. 2005 was sponsored by 85 Member States, among which were 27 ESCAP member states. In response, the UN Road Safety Collaboration was established. UNESCAP resolution 63/9 reaffirmed the need to implement the ESCAP Ministerial Declaration on Improving Road Safety in Asia and the Pacific which was adopted in Busan in Nov. 2006. Most recently, the 4th session of the Committee on Managing Globalization (Sept. 2007) discussed ways to improve road safety on the Asian Highway and elaborated on road-related road safety targets, see document E/ESCAP/CMG(4/I)/7 (English, Chinese, French, Russian).

How? The UNESCAP Secretariat has supported road safety efforts of its 62 member states and associate members since its establishment in 1947. Decision makers of the region have recognized the urgent need to improve road safety and have considered it a development issue. For example, Parties to the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Asian Highway Network have made a formal commitment to “give full consideration to issues of road safety” and the ESCAP Ministerial Declaration on Improving Road Safety in Asia and the Pacific includes the goal to “save 600,000 lives and prevent a commensurate number of serious injuries on the roads of Asia and the Pacific over the period 2007 to 2015” and invites ESCAP members to “develop the Asian Highway as a model of road safety”. At present, the UNESCAP Secretariat aims to promote regional cooperation for improving road safety. Focus areas are building capacity for setting and achieveing ambitious road safety goals and targets, in line with the set of the Ministerial declaration of 2006. In particular, the Secretariat promotes road safety projects and components in Asian Highway road projects.

Recent and upcoming activities:

• UN Development Account Project ("Improving Global Road safety: setting regional and national road traffic casualty reduction targets"), to start in Dec. 2007.
• Expert Group Meeting on Improving Road Safety on the Asian Highway, Bangkok, 21-22 June 2007. (Report of the Meeting, PDF). A CD with proceedings and related materials can be order from <escap-ttd "at"un.org>. The CD also includes country reports prepared for the related Regional Workshop on Upgrading of the Asian Highway Priority Routes, Bangkok, 19-21 June 2007
• Ministerial Conference on Transport, Busan, Nov. 2006.
• Expert Group Meeting on the Development of the Asian Highway Network: Regional Experiences and Lessons in Financing Highway Infrastructure and Improving Road Safety, Bangkok, 8-10 May 2006
  
• First UN Road Safety Week, April 2007