Road traffic accidents take around 1.35 million lives globally every year and cost most countries 3% of their GDP, a recent road safety summit in Sweden revealed.
Speaking at the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Stockholm, a top United Nations health official described the millions of lives lost every year due to road traffic collisions as ‘an outrage’.
The World Health Organization’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this was ‘an unacceptable price to pay for mobility’.
The event also revealed that 93% of the world’s road fatalities occur in low- and middle-income countries, even though these nations have only 60% of the world’s vehicles.
‘Most road traffic deaths and injuries can be prevented using tried and tested strategies,’ he added.
