3,500 people will die on the world’s roads today and 100,000 more will be seriously injured or disabled. But road death is not inevitable–it is preventable. There has never been a more opportune moment to tackle this serious and rapidly worsening public health crisis by fundamentally changing the inherent safety of road systems around the world. Causes of road trauma are well known, as are ‘vaccines’ to prevent them. We know there is enormous potential to generate large social and economic returns from better investment; the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011- 2020 brings unprecedented international leadership and political-will to the cause. We can, and must, make this happen. iRAP is an international charity dedicated to creating a world free of high-risk roads. We work on a global scale and are moving urgently to save lives. We act on sound research and compelling evidence. Road Assessment Programmes (RAPs) are a catalyst for change, providing political leaders, policy makers and road builders with the social, economic and engineering evidence and tools needed to transform entire road networks. RAPs started with EuroRAP in 2001, as a partnership between automobile associations and road authorities leading in road safety. The programme created simple and objective measures of road safety risk and highlighted the vital role that road infrastructure can play in preventing crashes and reducing the severity of injuries. The approach spread rapidly throughout Europe, then to Australia, the United States and New Zealand, with local experts introducing their own innovative improvements. The focus then shifted to low-income and middle-income countries, where the road trauma crisis is most urgent. It culminated in the first edition of Vaccines for Roads in 2008 which presented pioneering work in Chile, Costa Rica, Malaysia and South Africa. iRAP is now a global programme of local road safety champions leading RAP activities in more than 70 countries. Some half a million kilometres of roads have been assessed. This second edition of Vaccines for Roads describes that work, with a particular focus on results in lowincome and middle-income countries. Sadly, about half the roads assessed in these countries are rated in the highest risk bands: one-star or two-stars. The reasons for this are clear and include the fact that 84% of the roads where pedestrians are present have no footpaths. The good news is that Safer Roads Investment Plans are making the solutions equally clear. Construction of just 65km of footpaths on high-risk roads in Costa Rica, for instance, would prevent almost 3,000 deaths and serious injuries over 20 years and save $215 million in crash costs. Much of this cost would otherwise be borne by an already stretched health sector. The plans are helping to demonstrate that by investing in safer roads, the social and economic burden on families, communities, workplaces and hospitals can be significantly lessened. By setting ambitious policy targets such as the elimination of one-star and two-star roads by 2020 or a requirement that all new roads achieve four-stars, countries can create a legacy of safe roads for future generations. As a registered charity, iRAP benefits from the generous financial support of the FIA Foundation, the Road Safety Fund which is jointly managed by the FIA Foundation and the World Health Organisation, and the Global Road Safety Facility. This support enables us to provide safety tools and software to low-income and middleincome countries free-of-charge and give the programmatic support needed to ensure that assessments are completed to the same, high-quality consistency around the world. We are very fortunate to have lasting partnerships with many road authorities, automobile associations, multilateral development banks, research institutes, donors and non-government organisations. A network of accredited road safety professionals and companies capable of competitively bidding to provide high-quality iRAP assessments is also growing. The central message of Vaccines for Roads is simple: large-scale, immediate improvements to high-risk roads will save lives today and long into the future. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting