Fleet Forum Hosted by FIA Foundation at Launch of Make Roads Safe Campaign

Estimates suggest that more people in the developing world are killed by road crashes than malaria each year.  This at a cost of US$100 billion per annum, surpassing all overseas aid combined from OECD countries.

On 4-5 May 2009, with the support of the FIA Foundation, the Fleet Forum brought together organisations who are leading the fight to positively impact road safety within the humanitarian community.  The event was held in conjunction with the FIA Foundation's Make Roads Safe ‘Decade of Action' launch event.  Participating in the two days were humanitarian agencies, donors, government representatives, road safety experts, automobile association leaders and other concerned stakeholders dedicated to making long-lasting positive change to road safety throughout the world.  Also engaging in dialogue with the  humanitarian community were actress and Make Roads Safe Global Ambassador Michelle Yeoh and Chairman of the Commission for Global Road Safety Lord Robertson of Port Ellen.

Fundamental to the question of how to address road safety for the humanitarian community is the need for donors who fund projects and agencies to actively push for road safety to become a criteria of selection for good donorship.  The event saw the humanitarian agencies present together nominate the Fleet Forum to take up the challenge of advocating these changes to the donor community by acting as the official authority to address road safety within the humanitarian community.

In an effort to earn the official endorsement, the Fleet Forum committed to actively advocating for fleet safety issues with the donor community by developing a business case that can be used by agencies and donors alike to advocate the importance of road safety.  This report aims to specifically look at the cost savings, fuel savings and reduction in accidents / incidents achieved when good road safety practices are implemented through the use of the existing Fleet Forum Fleet Safety toolkit.

For the FIA Foundation, the event marked a drive to have the ‘Make Roads Safe' report endorsed by the world's leading road safety experts, governments and particularly the humanitarian community who daily operate in the areas most affected by road accidents.  A coordinated humanitarian action plan for road safety is urgently needed with road crashes set to become the leading cause of disability and premature death for children aged 5-14 across developing countries by 2015.

At the conclusion of the event, the Fleet Forum  makes the following key recommendations to address global road safety:

• The humanitarian community should formally recognise the need to play its role in the fight against road deaths and injuries by adopting a culture of road safety and the fundamental tools, processes, and procedures necessary to achieve this.
• Making road safety a part of all funding proposals to donors will provide a marked cost savings that could be rolled-over into direct beneficiary aid - donors should require road safety be addressed by humanitarian agencies.
• The humanitarian community needs a unifying voice to represent it within the greater road safety community - the Fleet Forum should be funded to take up the challenge of acting as official authority on behalf of the community.
• The humanitarian community should approve a ‘Decade of Action for Road Safety' to play their role in reducing the forecast 2020 level of road deaths by 50% (from 1.9 million to below 1 million a year). It would have a similar status to the current UN Decade to Roll Back Malaria.

The FIA Foundation is an independent UK registered charity which manages and supports an international programme of activities promoting road safety, environmental protection and sustainable mobility, as well as funding specialist motor sport safety research.  Make Roads Safe is the FIA Foundation's campaign for global road safety.  

To find out more about both and to sign up your name to the Decade of Action for Road Safety, please visit their website.