Volvo Cars Calls On UN Delegates To Address Road Safety Inequality

Volvo Cars will today call on governments and regulators around the world to address a large inequality in road safety between developed and developing economies.

Coby Duggan Volvo Cars NZ general manager, says despite our own level of economic development, New Zealand’s road safety statistics suggest more needs to be done to raise awareness around the importance of using basic safety features, such as seat belts, along with an ongoing focus on reducing the numbers of pedestrians and cyclists killed on our roads.

Despite progress made in recent decades, official data shows a significant gap in the number of traffic fatalities between both categories of countries.

Each year, an estimated 1.35 million people lose their lives in traffic accidents - including 353 fatalities in New Zealand over the past 12 months.

That number alone underlines the need for action, but data by the World Health Organisation (WHO) also shows that the risk of road traffic death is more than three times higher in developing countries than in developed countries.

In order to improve global road safety, Volvo Cars believes countries should promote safety belt usage by introducing and enforcing seat-belt laws covering both front and rear seats. Basic road infrastructure that keeps vulnerable road users separate from motorised traffic should be another key focus area.

Duggan says while New Zealand has relatively high compliance with seat belt regulations by global standards there is still a significant disparity between usage rates of passengers in the rear seats and those in the front.

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“The simple act of putting on your seat belt can reduce your chance of serious injury or death in a collision by 40%,

“While the chances of a fatal injury are approximately the same for those sitting in the front and rear, around a tenth of New Zealanders travelling in the rear of the vehicle are not adequately restrained,” he says.

Duggan says comparable markets such as Australia have a noticeably higher rate of adherence to regulations when it comes to the protection of passengers in the back seat.

Volvo Cars’ call for action comes as the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, hosted by Sweden and the WHO, starts in Stockholm this week. At the conference, delegates from over 80 United Nations member states will discuss the future strategic direction for global road safety up to 2030 and beyond.

“Global data shows that there is significant inequality in road safety,” says Malin Ekholm, head of the Volvo Cars Safety Centre.

“Those safety gaps need to be addressed through technology, but also by creating and enhancing a global safety culture. We need to understand and address the variation in seat belt usage, while infrastructure should focus on improving the safety of vulnerable road users, pedestrians and cyclists.”

Duggan says this is another key area where New Zealand can improve with around cyclists and pedestrians making up around 12% of fatalities on our roads.

Volvo Cars is keen to contribute to global road safety initiatives with its wealth of safety knowledge, as it has done for many decades in collaboration with governments, academia and regulators. For example, last year it launched an open database containing decades of safety-related research, which can be found here.

“Volvo Cars has a long tradition in improving safety through collaboration, a crucial success factor for our leadership in safety,” says Ekholm. “Creating a better understanding of the value and need for adequate basic protection is crucial, and we need the help of the UN and national lawmakers to address this through legislation and information.

At Volvo Cars we look forward to being part of and contributing to this.”

The modern three-point safety belt, first introduced by Volvo Cars in 1959, is the single most important safety feature in a car. Without it, other advanced technological safety features become largely ineffective; an auto-brake function is much less effective if people inside the car do not wear a safety belt that keeps them secured in their seats. The same applies to child restraints, which help to protect children of different sizes.

Yet only 105 of the world’s countries have safety-belt laws that cover both front and rear seat occupants, in line with best practice. Volvo Cars is calling on the UN to urge lawmakers around the world to adjust and enforce safety-belt laws to cover all passengers in all vehicles.

As cyclists, pedestrians and motorcycle users represent more than half of global road deaths, Volvo Cars also recommends that UN member states also focus road safety spending on, for example, clearly delineated pedestrian and cyclist lanes with barriers to protect these most vulnerable road users.

By promoting such affordable and easy-to-realise infrastructure changes that keep motorised vehicles separate from pedestrians and cyclists, Volvo Cars believes numerous lives can be saved.

Since the 1960s and 1970s, data from real-world crash investigations by Volvo Cars has helped Swedish road authorities to introduce new safety features such as deformable lamp posts, updated guard rail designs and walkways separated from roads.

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