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Deadly traffic: a pandemic the world can put an end to

'Roads are second only to HIV/AIDS in killing people aged between 15 and 29.'

What is the common thread linking 32 year-old Margaret Oduku and nine members of a Kenyan church choir to 57 people traveling on a bus in Guatemala and a 14-year-old schoolboy waiting for a bus in New Delhi? They were all killed in recent traffic accidents.

Traffic death and injury is a global pandemic in which more than 1.2 million lives are lost annually; another 50 million people suffer debilitating injuries. And most of the victims live in developing countries.

"Traffic accident" is a euphemism for the gross negligence that perpetuates this carnage; far from being unpredictable and unavoidable, most traffic-related injuries could be prevented through simple, cheap safety strategies.

Next week, the UN General Assembly will vote on convening the first ministerial summit on road safety. The stakes could hardly be higher. Traffic injuries in developing countries kill on the scale of malaria or tuberculosis. For children between five and 14, traffic injuries are the biggest single source of death and roads are second only to HIV/AIDS in killing people aged between 15 and 29. In contrast to rich countries, developing countries' casualty lists are dominated by pedestrians, cyclists and passengers in public transport vehicles.

The world's most dangerous roads are in Africa. Britain has a fatality rate of one death per 10,000 vehicles; in Ethiopia and Uganda it tops 190. Traffic deaths are climbing most rapidly in Asia and Latin America, where rising prosperity fuels car sales and investment in roads.

The costs go beyond personal suffering. Lost productivity as a result of traffic injury wipes out 1 percent to 2 percent of output in developing nations. In some countries, more than half of the surgical and trauma beds in hospitals are taken up by road victims. And, for the poor, a traffic injury usually causes greater poverty. When cars hit women farmers in Bangladesh, there is no welfare system to pick up the pieces.

Every country has its own variant of the road injury virus. Dangerous drivers, badly maintained vehicles, poor pedestrian safety design and weak enforcement of standards are common themes. Add to this lethal cocktail lax regulation and government indifference, and you have a perfect equation for loss of life.

There is no better place to get a view of the traffic pandemic than New Delhi.

This is a car crash capital, with more than 2,000 deaths a year.

On the expressway, trucks speed past women carrying firewood. Because the highway slices through communities, children put their lives at risk to cross the road.

Cutting road deaths does not take rocket science. Building road safety into transport infrastructure design and enforcing traffic rules are proven life-savers. Since 2000, Rwanda has cut road deaths by one-third through a cut-speed safety strategy. Thailand and Vietnam have used education and law enforcement to increase helmet use.

Why, then, are governments failing to protect their citizens? Partly because the victims lack a political voice. But often traffic death and injury is viewed as the inevitable collateral damage that comes with economic growth.

Aid donors are part of the problem. Most have yet to grasp the fact that an ethical transport policy has to be part of poverty reduction strategies.

Take the case of sub-Saharan Africa. Two years ago, the G8 pledged US$1.2 billion for road development in the region. Road safety financing amounts to less than 1 percent of the package. Meanwhile, with a US$4 billion transport infrastructure portfolio, the World Bank and regional development banks employ just two full-time road safety specialists among them.

The Global Road Safety Campaign wants the UN summit to agree a US$300 million fund for building road safety capacity in developing countries. It calls on donors to invest 10 percent of road infrastructure budgets on safety. But governments don't have to wait for a summit meeting to act -- and their citizens cannot afford delay. It is time for a 21st-century transport policy that puts human safety at the heart of road management.

Kevin Watkins is senior research fellow at Oxford University's Global Economic Governance Program.
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