Expert workshop
The World Bank hosted a road safety exhibition and expert meeting at its headquarters in Washington DC in October. Safe Kids Worldwide organised the exhibition called ‘PhotoVoice’ which featured photographs giving a children’s perspective on road safety, whilst the Taskforce for Child Survival arranged the workshop which brought together leading road safety experts and public health economists.
Speaking at the exhibition launch Kathy Sierra, the Bank’s Vice President, Sustainable Development Network stressed that road safety is a development priority for low and middle income countries. She emphasised that road crashes disproportionately harm the poor and especially children. The Bank’s Vice President also warned that by 2030 road crashes are forecast to be the single biggest cause of healthy life years lost by children aged between 5 and 14.
Kathy Sierra gave the example of Afghanistan where road traffic crashes are particularly acute in Kabul. Citing a UNICEF/Save the Children survey, she warned that “many children in Kabul knew someone who had been killed or injured in a car accident. The problem is particularly great for girls who are increasingly leaving home to go to school and are unused to walking on busy streets. For children in Kabul, the changes peace has brought can be as threatening as those of war”. Also speaking at the launch was Mitch Stoller, President of Safe Kids Worldwide and David Ward, Director General of the FIA Foundation.
Coinciding with the exhibition the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility hosted the expert workshop to examine the costs of road traffic injury prevention. A background paper was prepared by Jagadish Guria, Senior Economist of the New Zealand Institute for Economic Research and presentations were also made by Dr Kavi Bhalla, Research Scientist at the Harvard Institute for Public Health, Professor Delia Hendrie of the Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia, Dr Ted Miller of the Pacific Institute for Research & Evaluation, Associate Professor David Bishai of John Hopkins University, and Fred Wegman, Managing Director of the Institute for Road Safety Research in the Netherlands. The workshop, in particular, positively examined the feasibility of achieving a 50% reduction in the forecast level of road deaths by 2020 and explored the costs and benefits of achieving significant reductions in fatalities in low and middle income countries. The FIA Foundation sponsored the expert meeting and was also attended by David Ward.