Traffic jam in Dar es Salaam, the country's
commercial capital. Tanzania, four other countries and ten cities have
been selected to receive technical support to the tune of USD125m.
With a new commitment of USD125m, the programme will work at both
the national level to strengthen road safety legislation and the city
level to implement proven road safety interventions, a report made
available to The Guardian has said.
It did not mention the specific transport and travel areas or urban areas that are going to benefit from the initiative.
Besides Tanzania, other countries which will benefit from the
reduction of fatalities and injuries from road traffic crashes are
China, India, Philippines and Thailand, while the cities pecked are
Accra (Ghana) Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Bandung (Indonesia), Bangkok
(Thailand), Bogota ( Colombia), Fortaleza (Brazil), Ho Chi Minh
(Vietnam), Mumbai (India), Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Shanghai (China).
“We can prevent millions of road traffic fatalities and injuries
through stronger laws, more effective enforcement and better
infrastructure. The 10 cities selected to participate in our next
five-year road safety programme have demonstrated a commitment to this
work, and we are excited to support them,” said Michael R. Bloomberg,
founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and three-term mayor of New York
City.
“Road traffic deaths will become increasingly common in the years
ahead, unless we take decisive action now to prevent them,” he said.
The proposals that cities submitted detailed how they plan to
address road safety by applying solutions to a number of challenges
including improving pedestrian and cyclist safety, increasing awareness
through graphic media campaigns and increasing police enforcement to
combat drinking and driving and speeding as well as encouraging the use
of motorcycle helmets, seat-belts and child restraints.
Infrastructure solutions such as widened sidewalks and improved
pedestrian crossings are also included in the cities’ proposals, the
reports said.
With assistance from the world’s leading experts in road safety,
winning cities will establish an elite network of visionary municipal
leaders who commit to implementing bold, new efforts to save lives and
protect their citizens from road traffic injuries, it said.
“The investments in road safety by Bloomberg Philanthropies since
2010 have driven momentum for the UN’s Decade of Action on Road Safety,
energised the NGO community worldwide and led to significant legislative
advances in many countries,” said Saul Billingsley, Director General of
the FIA Foundation and Co-Chair of the Road Safety Fund.
“Bloomberg Philanthropies has shown great vision and leadership in
supporting global road traffic injury prevention, and we hope other
public health philanthropies will heed and follow their example,” he
said.
More than 1.2 million people die and 20-50 million people are
severely injured from road traffic crashes around the world every year.
Since Bloomberg Philanthropies began working on road safety in
2007, nearly 2 billion people have been covered by strengthened road
safety laws, 65 million people have been exposed to hard-hitting media
campaigns promoting road safety, close to 30,000 professionals have been
trained on road safety tactics and local governments have committed
USD225m towards infrastructure improvements that will make roads safer.
In 2010, Bloomberg Philanthropies committed USD125m to 10 countries
that represented half of road traffic-related deaths globally (Brazil,
Cambodia, China, Egypt, India, Kenya, Mexico, Russia, Turkey and
Vietnam).
Brazil, Kenya, China, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, Cambodia and Vietnam
have all passed life-saving road safety legislation, including stricter
penalties for drinking and driving and applied speed reduction laws.
Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Road Safety partners providing support to
winning cities and countries include: EMBARQ which is a part of the
World Resources Institute and is based in Washington, DC. They work on
sustainable urban transport, urban design, pedestrianisation, mass
transit, and sustainability planning.
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