Today the World Health organization released a new Global Road Safety Status Report (2015). An important milestone monitoring the worldwide progress made on preventing road traffic injuries. 

“Road traffic fatalities take an unacceptable toll – particularly on poor people in poor countries,” says Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO. “We’re moving in the right direction,” adds Dr Chan. “The report shows that road safety strategies are saving lives. But it also tells us that the pace of change is too slow.” 

Some 1.25 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes, according to the World Health Organization’s Global status report on road safety 2015, despite improvements in road safety. With more than 300.000 deaths a year, road traffic injuries remain the #1 cause of death among people aged 15-29 years.

The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims (WDR) is commemorated on the third Sunday of November each year – to remember the many millions killed and injured on the world’s roads, together with their families, friends and many others who are also affected.

Watch the film here.

The film is launched today to coincide with and support International Walk to School Day, and to deliver the message that children must have the basic right to walk to and from school free from road traffic danger today and every day.

Filmed on location in South Africa and France, the short public service announcement – co-funded by the FIA and the FIA Foundation – contrasts the journey to school of children in both countries, and the different, but real, risks both face. The aim of the film is to raise public awareness of the 500 child deaths and many thousands of serious injuries every day on the world’s roads, to encourage wider public support for action to put in place measures to reduce this daily toll. The film asks people to sign the ‘Child Declaration for Road Safety’ of the #SaveKidsLives campaign, drafted in consultation with children around the world, a call for action including:

• To demand investment in a ‘Safe System’ approach to road safety: including managing vehicle speed through road design and traffic calming, awareness raising and speed enforcement; 
• To re-focus road and urban design policy to put pedestrian access and safety as the first priority, with equitable sharing of road space; provision of safe pavements and crossing points, and traffic speed reductions where necessary; 
• To promote action to tackle drink driving; to ensure school bus transportation is safe, well maintained and has seat belts; and to promote seat belt and motorcycle helmet use.

Luc Besson, director of many acclaimed movies including Subway, Nikita, The Fifth Element, Léon, and The Lady, was asked to make the advocacy film by the President of the FIA, Jean Todt. Mr Besson filmed in South Africa and France in early 2015.

One version of the film includes some of the shocking real-life crash footage which inspired the South Africa sequences, and which demonstrates the appalling danger and violence that some children are exposed to every day, often while just trying to negotiate the route to school.

Jean Todt, President of the FIA, said: “Road traffic crashes are today the number one killer of children aged 15-29. And without urgent action, they will soon be the number one killer of those aged between 5-14. We must do everything in our power to halt this scourge and this film can act as a rallying call.”

The FIA Foundation’s director, Saul Billingsley, said: “The FIA Foundation is proud to have partnered with the FIA to support Luc Besson’s compelling new film. We hope it will secure a new wider audience and new awareness for the scale of the road traffic injury epidemic, and particularly of the situation in developing countries where more than 90% of the child deaths and injuries occur. These are preventable tragedies. For too long there has been a tendency to ‘blame the victim’ – to blame the child crossing the road – rather than the road design, inequitable land planning, political inaction, and other system failures, like lack of speed control, that are the real causes of this appalling carnage.

By signing the #SaveKidsLives Child Declaration, people can join more than 800,000 others, and counting, in demanding change. With the inclusion of road safety targets in the Global Goals now is the time to be putting the pressure on policymakers to place the road rights of children high on the SDG priority list. We want at least a million people to have backed this call to action by the time of the Brasilia Ministerial, forty days from now.”

The #SaveKidsLives campaign is led by the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration, the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety and the NGO Youth for Road Safety (YOURS) and has engaged the support of NGOs, companies and more than 800,000 members of the public around the world during 2015. FIA automobile clubs have been prominent in supporting the campaign, and the FIA Foundation has provided donor funding and technical support. One of the Foundation’s partners, AIP Foundation, has collected more than 500,000 signatures for the #SaveKidsLives Declaration in South East Asia and China. The campaign will hold a Rally on the eve of the Brasilia Global High Level Conference on Road Safety, on 17th November 2015.

Sign the Child Declaration for Road Safety