Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari Minister on Sunday left for Brazil to attend the two day global conference in Brazil on road safety. The 2nd High Level Global Conference on Traffic Safety Time of Results, is being held in the capital city Brasilia on November 18 and 19, an official statement said.
It is slated to be one of the most important discussions in the world on traffic safety and aims to reaffirm the international community’s commitment towards reduction of traffic accidents that are responsible for 1.2 million fatalities every year, the statement added.
One of the major objectives of the event is to review the progress made by countries in implementing the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020.
The plan aims to save five million lives worldwide through the adoption of policies, programmes, actions and legislations to increase safety on the roads especially for pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.
The First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety was held in Russia in 2009. Thereafter, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution for “Improving Global Road Safety”, in 2014. The forthcoming Brazil conference emerges from the UN resolution.
The resolution expresses a concern about the fact that only 7 per cent of the global population is protected by appropriate traffic laws, which provides mandatory use of helmets, seat belts and protective devices for children among other norms.
According to WHO’s Global Status Report on Road Safety 2013, 35 countries, accounting for nearly 10 per cent of the world population, have passed laws tackling one or more of the five key-factors of risk between 2008 and 2011.