The third Sunday every November is the Day we are reminded that road traffic crashes are not the problem of one person, one country, or one continent. It’s a global and silent plague that touches us all!

When people are killed or severely injured in road traffic crashes before their time, the world loses more than an individual; it loses their potential, their ideas, their future impact on society. They become lost talent.

The United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims in 2005 as "the appropriate acknowledgment for victims of road traffic crashes and their families."

Every year since, it has been kept in observance. It provides a platform for road traffic victims and their families to:

  • remember all people killed and seriously injured on the roads,

  • acknowledge the crucial work of the emergency services,

  • draw attention to the generally trivial legal response to culpable road deaths and injuries and advocate for an appropriately serious response,

  • advocate for better support for road traffic victims and victim families,

  • promote evidence-based actions to prevent,

  • and, eventually, stop further road traffic deaths and injuries.

Remember! Support! Act!

Every year, millions more road victims are added to the current toll of over 50 million killed and hundreds of millions injured since the first recorded road death in 1869. It is an actual pandemic, affecting primarily our vulnerable and our young, which, in addition to the trauma of injury and bereavement, has also a devastating economic impact for countries, communities and families.

At the end of the day, road safety is about people and saving lives.

Pausing to remember at UNHQ

From 10 to 16 November, stop by the exhibition at the curved wall of the first floor of the Conference Building at UN Headquarters in New York.

Pause to think about our families, friends, United Nations colleagues, and the people that we serve in our day-to-day work and who were seriously injured as a result of road traffic crashes, and to mourn those who lost their lives.

See the communications materials for the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.