The African region has the highest estimated road traffic fatality rate of 26.6 per 100,000 population, despite having the lowest level of motorisation in the world. This equates to 650 deaths per day, nearly half of which involve vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.
In addition to the human suffering caused by road traffic injuries, they also incur a heavy economic burden on victims and their families, both through treatment costs for the injured and through loss of productivity of those killed or disabled. More broadly, road traffic injuries have a serious impact on national economies, costing countries 3% of their annual gross domestic product. There is an urgent need to implement safety solutions.
Currently, the lack of integrated urban planning is resulting in challenges particularly for vulnerable groups, the lack of regulatory frameworks; a priority towards car-oriented transport policies, outdated street design and traffic management and lack of mobility data are some of the underlying factors behind the high rate of road accidents and the lack of consolidated action.
Recently, UN’s Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety, clearly states, “We must all work together as a finely oiled machine to create an overarching safe systems approach to road safety and it must underlie every aspect of the world’s transportation ecosystem”.
UITP is happy to announce its involvement in the EU-funded H2020 TRANS-SAFE project, which aims to maximise the impact of these solutions above by bringing road safety agencies and experts from Europe and Africa to drive policy actions.
This initiative seeks to drive forward effective approaches for road safety development. The project will ensure the road conditions meet the recommendations of the Road Safety Cluster of the African-EU Transport Task Force (2020).
Overall, the project will help deliver on the Joint EU-Africa Strategy and advance countries’ progress towards the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development Goals.
The project will involve national, regional, and city-level demonstrations to test different types of innovative and integrated Safe System solutions, complemented by a comprehensive toolbox, capacity development, policy support and replication activities. To maximise impact, the project brings together a consortium of highly committed cities, road safety agencies and experts from both Europe and Africa.
Guest Editorial