The 22nd Meeting of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration (UNRSC) took place recently and included updates from members in the world of global road safety. Part of the meeting was dedicated to the United Nations Global Road Safety Week, which is set for May 2017. The theme for the week is speed; the promotion of mesaures to reduce speed to save lives.

The UN Road Safety Collaboration is pleased to announce that the Fourth UN Global Road Safety Week will be held from 8-14 May 2017. The Week will focus on speed and what can be done to address this key risk factor for road traffic deaths and injuries. The Fourth UN Global Road Safety Week seeks to increase understanding of the dangers of speed and generate action on measures to address speed, thereby saving lives on the roads.

Speed contributes to around one-third of all fatal road traffic crashes in high-income countries, and up to half in low- and middle-income countries.

Countries successfully reducing road traffic deaths have done so by prioritizing safety when managing speed. Among the proven strategies to address speed include:

• Setting and enforcing speed limits appropriate to the function of each road, for example:
  • Setting and enforcing a maximum speed limit of 50 kilometers per hour in urban areas;
  • Setting and enforcing a maximum speed limit of 30 kilometers per hour on roads with high concentrations of pedestrians, cyclists and motorized traffic;

• Enforcing speed limits through the use of automatic speed cameras;
• Installing intelligent speed adaptation technology in vehicles;
• Building or modifying roads to include features that limit speed such as traffic lights, roundabouts and speed humps.

The Fourth UN Global Road Safety Week seeks to increase understanding of the dangers of speed and generate action on measures to address speed, thereby saving lives on the roads.

We will be assisting the World Health Organization (WHO) on the coordination, production and dissemination of the fourth week. This week will follow the legacy of the #SaveKidsLives campaign, which was highly interactive and engaging attracting over 1 million people globally in support of its message.

In developing the week, a new online platform will be created to host the week, which will also host information about all other weeks. This ensures that the fourth week and subsequent weeks will be consistently engaging, easy to navigate and connected.

 For now, organizations can register events for the Fourth UN Global Road Safety Week at WHO’s website:
http://www.who.int/roadsafety/week/2017/event-registration/en/

The Transport Accident Commission has launched a provocative new campaign urging Victorians to rethink the speeds they drive at. The Rethink Speed campaign features a television advertisement reminding Victorians that speed doesn’t always cause crashes but it always determines the level of injuries sustained. It depicts seven different outcomes in an incident between a young boy on a bike and a car approaching at seven different speeds.

In a sort of ‘road safety’ mannequin challenge, the TAC campaign rethinks speed.

“This campaign has a message for all of us – that we need to be mindful of our surroundings and the conditions when choosing our travel speeds,” Mr Calafiore said.

Rather than focussing on illegal speeding behaviour, ‘Rethink Speed’ encourages Victorians to choose to travel speeds that are safe, legal and appropriate for the conditions.

Behind the scenes at TAC’s new video:

“Speed limits don’t determine the speed we should be travelling at. They set the maximum speed we are allowed to travel at and in reality it won’t be safe at all times and in all conditions. We know that in any crash involving a car or motorbike, speed determines the level of injury. Increase your speed and increase the likelihood of severe injury or death in the event of a crash.”

The campaign will appear on television screens, roadside billboards, websites, radio and social media.

View the campaign video here:

Find out more about TAC’s innovative campaigns here.

Africa Road Safety 2016 marked the 5th GRSP road safety event in Africa since 2012. The event this year was held in Durban, South Africa.

Under the banner, ‘The Challenges for Communities, Cities, Companies and Countries’, GRSP and partners brought together 120 stakeholders from more than 20 countries representing government, civil society, research bodies and the private sector for a comprehensive event comprising a range of stimulating capability building workshops, keynote addresses, high level panel discussions and plenary sessions over two full days.

South African Minister for Transport, Dipuo Peters, who also attended our 2014 event when it was last in South Africa, gave a rousing address in the opening plenary urging those with capacity to act, to act – and encouraging stronger collaboration across the country and continent to take road safety activity to scale. The South African Minister focusing on young people in road safety, drawing attention to the biggest burden facing youth globally; road traffic crashes.

Reinforcing the Minister’s words, United Nations Special Envoy for Road Safety, Mr Jean Todt, sent a personalised video message to participants of the event calling for greater coordination of efforts in Africa in order to reach the ambitious road safety targets as set out in the Sustainable Development Goals.

Together with thought provoking keynote presentations from GRSP, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the event focused on capacity building through a programme of 3 engaging panel discussions and 6 interactive workshops which addressed key aspects concerning data, children, youth, policing, the private sector and infrastructure.

We were involved in the youth workshop focusing on how we can activate young leaders to take responsibility for road safety as advocates, youth ambassadors and key actors.

There was also an open ‘Speak Up’ session giving participants an opportunity to share challenges and successes, to highlight their take-aways from this event, and to reflect on learnings from previous GRSP events.

Participants left feeling connected with other like-minded actors, enriched with ideas and examples of good practice and motivated to take learnings back to their community, company, city or country and strive for real change.

GRSP’s regional events have become flagship events on the road safety calendar. Since 2007, GRSP has conducted 14 such events in 10 countries bringing together more than 2100 road safety practitioners from over 50 countries to share knowledge and professional experiences, discuss successes and challenges, showcase good practice and build strong regional networks where previously few had existed.

Africa Road Safety 2016 was made possible because of the generous support from Event Partners Shell, Total and Toyota, and Event Supporters the Ethekwini Municipality and Alcolizer.

We spoke with the KASI Team recently at the GRSP Africa Summit in Durban, South Africa. They told us all about their innovative youth based work in preventing road crashes, particularly int he townships of South Africa. Through a range of creative means, from exhibitions to school visits and beyond, the KASI team are a great example of youth taking action for road safety. 

We spoke with the KASI Team recently at the GRSP Africa Summit in Durban, South Africa. They told us all about their innovative youth based work in preventing road crashes, particularly int he townships of South Africa. Through a range of creative means, from exhibitions to school visits and beyond, the KASI team are a great example of youth taking action for road safety.

Who is the KASI Road Safety team?
We are a team of entrepreneurs who recognized the lack of adherence to the laws regulating road usage in townships, (the term townships is used to refer to various kinds of settlements in different countries, particularly high populated and dense urban areas). Drivers conduct themselves differently when they enter the townships and as a result many road crashes take place. These crashes adversely affect government, businesses, families and has in essence turned our townships into “war zone”.

What does KASI Road Safety do?
Kasi Road Safety has and continues to cultivate progressive relationships with road users, related community organizations, media, government and the private sector in order to bring attention to the effects of Drink & Driving, Disregarding Traffic Laws, Car Spinning, Racing, Drifting & Speeding on public roads, Texting & Driving… amongst many traffic violations. 

Our public outreach platforms are created and are available for use by the private and public stakeholders we partner with.

1. Reach out to Government, Media, Corporate and Community to beseech their support to prevent the immense waste of human life on our country’ roads as South Africa holds a questionable distinction of highest road crash fatalities in the world.
2. Work as an ambassador group tocreate social will and help improve roadsafety in our communities and encourage compliance amongst youth towards traffic laws.
3. Sensitize masses by raising awareness about road fatalities and their grave consequences in our communities.
4. Develop cost effective road safety programs to increase knowledge, awareness and education amongst the South African road users regularly.
5. Strive to change the negative attitude and behavior of road users particularly amongst the young people through our different programs.
6. Promote positive attitude towards Law Enforcers and infuse sense of courtesy and concern among road users.
7. Regularly monitor local and international road statistics and developments in order to effect improvements in our communities.
8. Challenge young people driven by adrenaline to refrain from endangering their lives and that of other innocent roads users by getting involved in illegal motor sporting activities particularly “Spinning, Drifting & Drag Racing” on public roads.
9. Edge and encourage all tavern owners to pledge their support by promoting Road Safety in their place of business through putting up posters etc.