The FIA Foundation has joined forces with the Asia Injury Prevention (AIP) Foundation and the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility to launch a new Global Helmet Vaccine Initiative, which aims to dramatically increase motorcycle helmet wearing during a Decade of Action.
The GHVI was launched at an event in Moscow, ahead of the First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, by the AIP Foundation’s chairman, Greig Craft; FIA Foundation Director General David Ward; World Bank Transport Director Jamal Saghir and Make Roads Safe campaign ambassador Michelle Yeoh. The GHVI will be led by the AIP Foundation, based in Vietnam, who led the advocacy and awareness campaign in Vietnam which resulted in a major, and successful, government effort to increase motorcycle helmet use which over the past two years has resulted in a 14% reduction in fatalities and 24% reduction in serious injury. With initial start-up funding from the FIA Foundation and the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility, the GHVI aims to expand this model to other target countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America where motorcycle use is exploding.
Greig Craft, Chairman of the AIP Foundation, said:
“Three thousand five hundred people are killed every day in road crashes around the world; generally the young. This is the equivalent of six fully loaded jumbo jets falling out of the sky every 24 hours, killing all aboard. Road traffic accidents are a public health issue that has reached global, epidemic proportions; fortunately, there are solutions to this crisis. Helmets are a ‘vaccine’ of sorts. This conference is a seminal opportunity for the international community to take action to halt the spread of this overlooked, hidden epidemic,”
David Ward, Director General of the FIA Foundation, said:
“Motorcycle helmets are a simple, cheap and highly effective vaccine for serious head injuries on the road. The FIA Foundation sees the GHVI as a priority initiative as part of a safe systems approach to road injury prevention. Working alongside IRAP, for example, we could encourage both road design improvements, such as motorcycle lanes, and greater helmet use, public awareness and police enforcement of helmet wearing. The FIA Foundation encourages other donors to join us in supporting this vital new initiative”.
Jamal Saghir, Director of Energy, Transport and Water at the World Bank, said:
"The World Bank Global Road Safety Facility is pleased to be supporting AIPF's helmet campaign initiative. It is very clear from the impressive results achieved in Vietnam through this sustained and pivotal program that replication elsewhere will benefit the Bank's client countries in combating road traffic death and injuries. Interventions and campaigns such as these are a crucial part of the overall steps needed for countries to strengthen their road safety management systems, complementing and working alongside institutional reforms and properly sequenced strategies for building up capacity."