The World Bank and other international funding agencies which receive money from the British government are spending $4bn (£1.99bn) a year on building unsafe roads in poor countries which contribute to the heavy toll of deaths and injuries among children and young people, experts say today.
A report from the Commission for Global Road Safety says donors have failed to ensure that a significant part of their investment is earmarked for safety measures, such as the separation of pedestrians from traffic. Roads should be routed to bypass markets, so that stalls do not set up again on the edge of a busy highway. Roundabouts - 70 times safer than intersections - are not built because they are a little more expensive.
The result is that money earmarked for improving people's lives is being spent on projects that needlessly contribute to the huge and rising number of deaths and injuries in traffic accidents. A thousand young people under the age of 25 now die every day on the roads - half of them under nine. "It's a great tragedy to invest a lot of money in development and find that the money is making the roads worse," said David Ward, director general of the FIA Foundation set up by the automobile associations which is funding the first UN global road safety week which starts today. The commission, chaired by former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson, has specific concerns about the G8, which has pledged to increase funding for road building. Following the G8 Gleneagles summit in 2005, an action plan for roads was agreed at an estimated cost of $1.2bn.
Africa, says the report, has the world's most dangerous road network with a fatality rate of 28.3 per 100,000 people. The economic costs of deaths from crashes is $6.2bn. "Already facing such high human and economic costs it is, therefore, vital that investment in Africa's roads should not come at the price of even higher levels of death and injury," says the report. It urges a coherent road safety programme alongside the building schedule.
The road safety component in the action plan has estimated costs of $20m, far short of the 10% which the World Bank's guidelines suggest and would require $120m to be spent on safety measures. "To strengthen the road safety dimension of this much-needed investment in Africa's roads, there urgently needs to be increased donor support for road safety related knowledge transfer and technical capacity," says the report.
In the UK, just as in the rest of the world, it is the poor and most vulnerable who suffer most from road accidents. Even though our record is one of the best in the world, 70 children are killed or seriously injured on UK roads every week. But children in deprived areas are three times more likely to be hit by a vehicle than those who live in more affluent parts of the country.
"The UK's data is good overall but not good on children and vulnerable road users," said Mr Ward. "On a microscale, the same issue of poverty works here."
Tony Blair sent a video message of support to the campaign's launch in Geneva, which was also supported by motor racing champion Michael Schumacher. "It is becoming clear that road injury has a serious impact on the wider development goals we are all trying to achieve," said Mr Blair. "So I commend the proposal that the UN should organise a global ministerial meeting on road safety."
Figures from the World Health Organisation show that nearly 400,000 young people under the age of 25 are killed in road traffic accidents every year, while millions more are injured. Road accidents are the leading cause of death among the age group.
Margaret Chan, WHO director general, said: "Road traffic crashes are not 'accidents'. We need to challenge the notion that they are unavoidable and make room for a pro-active, preventive approach."
