Road safety on the world stage.

One of the most significant developments of the second half of the last century, in that it impacted the world’s population in many ways, was the growth of a global approach to political, social, industrial and commercial initiatives. This was seen most obviously in the formation of the United Nations and its various sub-organisations from 1945 onwards. One of the major sub-organisations was the World Health Organization, formed in 1948, which began running many different health related projects, particularly to assist developing countries.
It is interesting that the idea of taking a global approach to road safety, and recognising that it is a major health issue in all nations, took much longer to gel, but it is undoubtedly with us now. On 3 March 2010 the United Nations General Assembly agreed that 2011-2020 would be the global Decade of Action for Road Safety. Another manifestation of the growing global approach to road safety was the ‘First global ministerial conference on road safety’ held in Moscow in November 2009. Our ACRS President Lauchlan McIntosh attended this conference and reported on it in the February 2010 ACRS Journal [1]. But these activities were by no means the first stirrings of action at the global level.