Recently I joined an organization that I’d like to bring attention to. It’s called Makeroadssafe, the campaign for global road safety. It is an initiative calling on the international community to recognize road traffic injuries as a global health epidemic, and to take urgent action to stop the daily tragedy of thousands of preventable deaths and injuries. The Make Roads Safe campaign is calling on governments attending the first Global Ministerial Meeting on Road Safety, in Moscow in November 2009, to agree a global Decade of Action for Road Safety, with an action plan to cut the projected increase in road deaths by 50% by 2020.

This organization is backed by the FIA as well as some Formula 1 drivers including most recently Felipe Massa.

For me, it is a no brainer. I’ve been a Paramedic for 20 years now and have seen my share of traffic injuries of all sorts, many of them I would not describe to my worst enemy. Speaking from where I live in Canada, cars are faster (I have nothing against that, I own a BMW M3), there are more of them on the road, more and more people are simply irresponsible on the road (ie cell phones and other electronics), and there is a select younger crowd who slip a wide pipe on their mufflers and suddenly they are Mario Andretti. Inevitably I get called and see the results. Road rage is up as many believe they own the roads rather than accept that it is a privilege to drive on them.

I travel to other parts of the world where the roads are poor, cars are ‘crap’, rules of the road aren’t there, and children die every day as a result.

From their web site:

Road crashes are the leading global cause of death for young people aged 10-24, and by 2015 are predicted to be the leading cause of premature death and disability for children in developing countries aged five and above. Already, according to Unicef and the WHO, 260,000 children die and another 10 million are injured in road crashes every year.

If you are interested or even curious, just click on any of the links in this post or the button in the bottom left of the sidebar for more info.

Thanx for reading.