Traffic accidents contribute to a large percentage of deaths annually worldwide, with poor or little attention paid to road safety as the main cause. The Jakarta Post’s Elly Burhaini Faizal, who recently attended the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Stockholm, Sweden, as a recipient of the 2020 Road Safety Reporting Fellowship from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) in cooperation with the World Health Organization, filed her report on the conference and analysis of the importance of road safety.

Traffic congestion and poor road discipline are apparently the common perceptions of people with frequent visits to Indonesia. While road infrastructure is poor in many parts of the country, lack of discipline among road users in respecting traffic safety regulations, including putting on safety equipment such as helmets, is a common phenomenon here. Worse is the fact that post-crash care has not been delivered to the extent it needs to be.

Such poor road safety conditions in Indonesia have been highlighted by Jean Todt, president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), who also serves as the United Nations secretary-general’s special envoy for road safety.

“I have the privilege to regularly go to Bali, a beautiful location. But the traffic is horrendous. Two wheelers [are everywhere]. Around Jakarta, we know that in terms of road safety, [there is] traffic pollution,” Todt told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety: Achieving Global Goals 2030, held in Stockholm from Feb. 19 to 20.

The former French rally driver then shared his planned visit to Indonesia in May to meet and discuss road safety with the government.

“Well, there is a lack of [traffic] education and law enforcement, poor vehicles and huge numbers of two wheelers […] Sometimes, there is only one traffic route from one place to another,” Todt said.

“We will work with the [Indonesian] government to make sure things are improving.”

The Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety marked the end of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 and began the conversation for continued collaboration on road safety for the next 10 years.

Eighty ministers from 140 UN member countries and about 1,700 delegates participated in the two-day conference, which put road safety in the global goals of 2030. Road safety is one of the urgent topics included in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which stipulates the global commitment to “halve the number of global death and injuries from road traffic accidents”.

A very large number of countries participated in the conference despite fears of the COVID-19 outbreak, thus reflecting their great concern over poor road safety, which has killed scores of children and young people worldwide. Road traffic accidents rank eighth in the leading causes of death of all ages globally. This is the number one killer of people between 5 to 29 years of age.

“About 1.35 million people are killed every year in road accidents. Up to 50 million are severely injured. The rates are three times higher in low-income countries than in high-income countries,” Swedish Infrastructure Minister Tomas Eneroth said while addressing the conference.

“It may increase in coming years unless the global communities do something to reduce the preventable deaths and injuries.”

Eneroth went on to say that road safety practices had, in the past, been isolated from other policy areas.

“That must end that now. We must realize that working with road safety is part of a wide perspective of working with different perspectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf said that years ago, over 200 Swedish children lost their lives in traffic accidents annually. Quoting statistics, the king said the number is now down to only 16 per year.

“Of course 16 is not zero, but it is a lot better than 200. For many decades, politicians, civil society and industries have worked together seeking innovative solutions that make Swedish traffic safer for everybody.

“Despite accomplishments, much work still needs to be done,” the king said in his opening remarks for the conference, referring to Vision Zero, which was adopted by the Swedish Parliament in 1997 as the country’s official road safety policy.

Vision Zero, which has now been widely accepted as a modern road safety strategy, views road safety as the responsibility of not only road users but also related parties that develop and manage the transportation system, including road builders, vehicle manufacturers, transportation operators, as well as the police and lawmakers.

Throughout the conference, transportation and infrastructure ministers, policymakers, experts and academics, as well as representatives of the World Health Organization, the World Bank, members of the private sector, NGOs and the youth, who have become the biggest victims of road accidents, shared their thoughts and experiences on what had been successful in the implementation of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 and what possible achievements could be made in the next decade.

Jeffrey Michael, a professor from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Injury Research and Policy, said there were differences in safety standards among nations, especially those standards that applied to developing nations where 93 percent of global fatalities occured.

“There are some critical gaps that need to be closed with regard to the assurance of safety of vehicles for the entire global population,” he said.

Michael is one of the academics involved in writing Saving Lives Beyond 2020: The Next Steps, a book comprising recommendations of an academic expert group for the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety.

Safe vehicles across the globe are one of the group’s recommendations, which include improvements on sustainable practices and reporting, procurement, modal shift, child and youth health, infrastructure and technology, as well as mandatory implementation of zero speeding and a 30 kilometers per hour speed limit.

Alexandre Santacreu, a researcher with the International Transport Forum (ITF), suggested that speed must be regulated, managed and enforced on all types of transportation modes, including micromobility.

At the same time, authorities must carry out awareness campaign on speed and how speed kills people. As motorcycles are observed to be much more dangerous, many young people have now opted to use micromobility, such as e-scooters and e-bikes. The shift from motor vehicles to low-speed micromobility requires protection and adequate infrastructure, Santacreu said.

“This is an opportunity for Jakarta and other cities to create bike lanes. Those bike lanes are not reserved for bicycles, but they could be reserved lanes for all low-speed micromobility, which goes at 20, 25 or 30 kilometers per hour,” he told the Post.

Every street should be accessible to people cycling or using e-scooters, Santacreu said. That means residential or narrow streets should have low-speed and low-volume traffic. Meanwhile, wide streets need a dedicated one lane or multiple lanes for microvehicles.

“If you have micromobility that is well regulated low speed, similar to the speed of a person who is cycling, we think micromobility is good for cities,” Santacreu said.

It was also underlined in the conference that a shift to cleaner and healthier mode of transportation needed support. After its first establishment in Geneva last year, the UN Road Safety Fund, which was initiated by the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), has managed to generate US$20 million.

The commission then selected 10 winning projects in its initial call for proposals, which aim for low road traffic accident in low- and middle-income countries that have the biggest number of fatalities and injuries on the road.

“This [amount of money] is very little to change a global picture on road safety. We need more,” said UNECE executive-secretary Olga Algayerova.

“We need all countries to have road safety in their national budget because we cannot raise money for all 193 UN member states. They need budget dedicated either to their transportation, infrastructure or interior ministries.”

In the Stockholm conference, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced a doubling of its support for global road safety, committing another $240 million from 2020 to 2025 to save 600,000 more lives and prevent up 22 million injuries in low- and middle-income countries around the world.

Through the adoption of the Stockholm Declaration, in which some of its recommendations are basically the shift to safer and more active transportation, with a lot more attention given to speeding for the safety of children, delegates showed their particular concern that road traffic crashes should no longer be the leading cause of children’s deaths.

“It’s an unacceptable price of our mobility,” said Etienne Krug, WHO’s director for social determinants of health.

“We need infrastructure that promotes walking and cycling safely. That’s what the key thing is. We cannot continue to depend on car-based societies in Southeast Asia or anywhere in the world.”

Popular

To my horror, it’s just a movie!

RI, Australia strengthen partnership on taxing crypto assets

Pentagon chief congratulates Prabowo on being elected President