Global status report on road safety

Are you drinking and driving? Wearing no motorcycle helmet when driving? Not using restraints for your children in the car? Not wearing a seat-belt? If so, you are at higher risk for road traffic injury and even death. Just crossing the street may put you at risk.

In fact, pedestrians and cyclists constitute 27% of all road deaths. In some countries, this figure is higher than 75%.

Road traffic injuries are the eighth leading cause of death globally; around 3400 people lose their lives in road traffic crashes every day. For those who are left behind, road traffic crashes lead to a tremendous amount of pain and suffering and - in many settings around the world - to economic hardship.

This video was produced to mark the launch of the Global status report on road safety 2013 on 14 March 2013 which presents information on road safety from 182 countries.

Only 28 countries, covering 7% of the world's population, have comprehensive road safety laws on all five key risk factors: drinking and driving, speeding, and failing to use motorcycle helmets, seat-belts, and child restraints.

The pace of legislative change needs to rapidly accelerate if the number of deaths from road traffic crashes is to be substantially reduced, according to the Global status report on road safety 2013: supporting a decade of action, published by WHO.

In 2010, there were 1.24 million deaths worldwide from road traffic crashes, roughly the same number as in 2007. The report shows that while 88 Member States were able to reduce the number of road traffic fatalities, that number increased in 87 countries.

The report serves as a baseline for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020, declared by the UN General Assembly. Made possible through funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, this is the second in a series of Global status reports.

Additional links:

• Do you want to know how your country is doing? Check it out here
• World Health Organization (WHO)