Out of harm’s way

EVERY YEAR, the Lenten season provides the Metro a respite from its usual traffic conditions as Filipinos often flee the city to enjoy one of the few, long holidays of the year. Traffic authorities are thus gearing up again for the expected mass migration of motorists leaving Manila starting Thursday, while road safety operators are also advising drivers to take all necessary precautionary measures to prioritize safety above all.

In 2009, the World Health Organization ( WHO) released a global status report on road safety which estimated that over 1.2 million people die annually due to fatal road accidents, while between 20 to 50 million suffer non-fatal injuries. Among WHO’s key findings showed that low- and middle- income countries have higher road traffic fatality rates (21.5 and 19.5 per 100,000 people, respectively) than high-income countries (10.3 per 100,000), with over 90% of the world’s fatalities happening in the low- and middle-income economies even though both only account for 48% of the world’s registered vehicles.

“Beyond the enormous suffering they cause, road traffic crashes can drive a family into poverty as crash survivors and their families struggle to cope with the long- term consequences of the event, including the cost of medical care and rehabilitation and all too often funeral expenses and the loss of the family breadwinner,” WHO Director- General Margaret Chan wrote in the publication. “Road traffic injuries also place a huge strain on national health systems, many of which suffer from woefully inadequate levels of income.”

The latest WHO road safety global status report, which was published in 2015, showed that although the number of deaths globally has remained more or less the same since the 2009 figures ( 1.2 million), road accidents are now the leading cause of death among those aged 15 to 29 years and the ninth leading cause of death across all age groups — and is even projected to be ranked seventh by 2030.

“This recognition is needed: while a plateau in numbers is a welcome first step in the fight to reduce road traffic deaths, it is insufficient,” Dr. Chan said in the 2015 report. “In the past three years there has been a 16% increase in the number of vehicles on the world’s roads — in 2014 alone, a record 67 million passenger cars came into circulation. Set against this inexorable rise, much more must be done to stop the death and destruction on the world’s roads and to achieve the ambitious target for road safety set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

The SDG eyed by WHO and economies worldwide is to reduce road traffic deaths and injuries by 50% by 2020. This was decided in 2010 when the United Nations ( UN) General Assembly adopted Resolution 64/255 to establish the “Decade of Action for Road Safety” to stabilize and reduce predicted levels of road traffic fatalities around the world. A global plan of action was drafted to provide concrete measures to meet the goal, including promoting cost- effective solutions for making roads safer.

The health group ascribed the rise to the escalating death toll on roads still in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in emerging economies where urbanization and motorization accompany rapid economic growth.

“In many of these countries, necessary infrastructural developments, policy changes and levels of enforcement have not kept pace with vehicle use,” said WHO. “In contrast, many high-income countries have managed to break the link between rising motorization and road traffic deaths, with some managing to dramatically reduce such deaths.”

WHO added that these achievements are brought about by policies aimed at making infrastructure safer, improving the safety of vehicles, and implementing a number of other interventions known to be effective at reducing road traffic injuries.

Among WHO’s findings in the Philippines was that the lead agency in reducing road-related fatalities and injuries — the Road Safety Management Group under the Department of Transportation and Communications — is fully funded by the government to implement its national road safety strategy, which in line with the UN and WHO’s SDG is aimed at bringing down deaths and injuries on local roads by 50% by 2020.

It also found that policies on safer roads and mobility were in place, such as those that involve

( 1) formal audits required for new road construction projects,

(2) regular inspections of existing road infrastructure,

(3) promoting walking or cycling,

(4) encouraging investment in public transport, and

(5) separating road users and vulnerable road users, while ensuring better protection for the latter group.