UNITED NATIONS: The UN General Assembly closed its first ever High-level Meeting on road safety on Tuesday by adopting a sweeping new declaration aimed at halving road deaths by 2030 \u2013 over the sole objection of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The declaration passed by a recorded vote of 162 in favour to one against, with no abstentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It commits governments to strengthen national road safety systems, upgrade vehicle and infrastructure standards, and adopt the \u2018Safe System\u2019 approach, which designs roads and vehicles to survive the mistakes drivers inevitably make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US delegate, Dan Negrea, accused the declaration of \u201cmandate creep that has eroded the credibility of this institution,\u201d objecting to provisions linking road safety with climate and environmental policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRoad safety is a practical matter of engineering, sober driving and personal responsibility,\u201d he said. It \u201cshould not be used as a backdoor vehicle to enforce global climate pacts and top-down environmental restrictions on freedom of mobility.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other countries backed the declaration while marking their own reservations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Argentina stressed its sovereign right to implement it according to national law, while separately reserving its position on the World Health Organization\u2019s (WHO) role. Paraguay underlined that the follow-up process, like the declaration itself, is voluntary and non-binding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Opening the meeting, General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock addressed the question she said many people ask: why does the UN spend its time on road safety when wars and crises dominate the agenda?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The answer, she said, is scale. Road crashes kill more than 1.2 million people a year and injure some 50 million more \u2013 more, she noted, than are killed in direct conflict, murdered, or die of malaria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSince I began speaking,\u201d she told delegates, several more families had already received news that would change their lives forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She asked delegates to think of the everyday journeys that bring people to work, school or home \u2013 \u201cwhether you came by car, by bike or simply walked\u201d to UN Headquarters, all had taken part in \u201cthe complex choreography of New York\u2019s traffic system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The issue is personal for her too: her aunt was killed by a tram, a loss whose legacy, she said, \u201clingered\u201d, sending \u201cnever-ending ripples of devastation\u201d through the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New WHO data released alongside the declaration show the global road death rate fell 21 per cent between 2011 and 2025, even as more than a billion vehicles were added to the world\u2019s roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, 1.16 million people died in crashes in 2025, and road injuries remain the leading killer of children and young people aged 5 to 29.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus opened his remarks by asking delegates who had been in a crash or had lost or known someone killed or injured in one, to stand. \u201cI think almost all of us,\u201d he said. \u201cAll road deaths are preventable and none are acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gains are wildly uneven. Deaths fell 36 per cent in Europe and 15 per cent in the Western Pacific, but just two per cent in South-East Asia; they were flat in the Americas and up 17 per cent in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Motorcyclists, whose numbers have more than tripled since 2011, now account for nearly a third of all road deaths \u2013 though WHO says a certified helmet cuts the risk of dying more than sixfold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the UN\u2019s Special Envoy for Road Safety, Jean Todt, put it: \u201cBusiness as usual is a business of death.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UNITED NATIONS: The UN General Assembly closed its first ever High-level Meeting on road safety on Tuesday by adopting a sweeping new declaration aimed at halving road deaths by 2030 \u2013 over the sole objection of the United States. The declaration passed by a recorded vote of 162 in favour to one against, with no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n