According to WHO, nearly 1.3 million people die in road traffic crash – which averages as more than 3000 deaths everyday. Of these, nearly 400,000 young people under the age of 25 are killed. Millions more are injured or disabled. Road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death among young people globally.

Requested by the United Nations General Assembly, the Fifth United Nations Global Road Safety Week takes place from the 6th to the 12th of May 2019. This year the UN launches “#SpeakUp to Save Lives” to call for higher demand of strong leadership for road safety in governments, UN agencies, and civil societies, and immediate actions are needed to protect lives. In the meantime, it inspires NGOs, foundations, schools and universities to resolutely implement the education and meaningful intervention in road safety.

Earlier in February, the United Nations launched the Road Safety Strategy, which aims to meet the road safety targets in the Sustainable Development Goals. The United Nations General Assembly declared 2011-2020 as the Decade of Action for Road Safety, holding goals to reduce injuries and fatalities cause by road traffic at local, national and international levels. In line with SDG3: Good Health and Well-being, and SDG11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, the United Nations call for leadership in every community and institution to provide advocacy and technical assistant to ensure the implementation of Road Safety Strategy. The goal is to halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents by 2020. The target to save lives is indeed very ambitious but not un-achievable with everyone taking the responsibility to support it.

The #SpeakUp campaign, created for this year’s Road Safety Week, aligns to the principles of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. It advocates for a more comprehensive education of the risk on the road as well as traffic regulations, and encourages all of us start to demand road safety interventions that are evident-based and are proven to work.

The campaign includes a Toolkit about how to actively participate in the campaign and #SpeakUp for road safety. There are three steps in total:

  • Assess your journey,
  • Record your demands,
  • And then urge decision makers to make a pledge.

Starting from the full assessment the participant’s daily journey and identify the risk they encounter, coming up with the full demand based on their assessment result, then calling for the attention of policy-makers to fulfill the demands.

Click here for more information about the Road Safety Week and how to #SpeakUp.