No brake on a relentless rise car popularity

It is passing with surprisingly little recognition, but at present, humanity is conducting an unprecedented experiment with the automobile. It took one hundred years for the vehicle fleet to reach 1 billion. We are now trying to double that in 10 years. The relentless rise in popularity of the car shows no sign of slowing.

The history of the automobile now crosses three centuries; invented in the 19th, matured in the 20th and becoming fully globalised in the 21st. Although industrialised countries now have mature vehicle markets with low annual growth rates, the emerging economies of the BRIC countries and beyond are motorising spectacularly fast. The growing global middle class are fuelling demand for more and more cars.

Challenge: minimise the negative safety consequences
The challenge is to minimise the negative safety consequences of this explosive increase in automobiles and it is timely that the UN has declared a Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020, a long overdue recognition of the appallingly high level of death and injury on the world’s roads.

At the heart of the Decade of Action is a coherent Global Plan for effective road injury prevention – one drawing on years of experience and best practice. Based on the pioneering work of William Haddon, influenced by the Swedish Vision Zero concept and building on the recommendations of the World Report, the Global Plan promotes the Safe System Approach.

Confronting road traffic injury requires sustained action across all five pillars of the plan. We need safer road users, in safer vehicles, on safer roads, managed by authorities with the capacity and responsibility to develop and maintain mobility networks that are designed to be safe. Of course this is far easier said than done. Perhaps the biggest challenge of all is to encourage integrated action across all five pillars simultaneously.

Given inevitable resource constraints and competing priorities, it will be hard particularly for low and middle-income countries to implement all the recommendations of the Global Plan. They will need both strong political commitment and sustained investment. The Decade of Action provides a unique opportunity for this – one that we cannot afford to let slip.

David Ward
Director General FIA Foundation

 
Auteur: Joske van Lith