The remembrance day is to be held on the third Sunday of November. It is hoped that this day will help to improve accident prevention, without which the World Health Organisation (WHO) predicts that the number of fatalities and injuries will increase by about 65% by 2020.
According to the WHO World report on road traffic injury, published in 2004, 1.2 million people are killed each year in road traffic accidents and around 50 million people are injured, a figure equal to the population of Spain and Portugal combined.
A statement from the WHO secretariat pointed out that deaths and costs will continue to rise without the necessary road engineering and injury prevention programmes. The WHO also reports that road traffic injuries constitute (after malaria) the ninth most frequent cause of death and will probably move up to third place by 2020.
WHO World report on road traffic injury prevention (Please note that the file size is over 2 MB)
Related EPHA articles:
EPHA is partner in the VOICE project (Vulnerable road user organisations in cooperation across Europe) aimed to raise awareness on the needs ot vulnerable road users;
Halving road accidents by 2010 on top of the European Parliament’s agenda
