Exposure #CommitToAct

Activities / News
Posted on 28/02/2020

Exposure #CommitToAct

Every day 3,700 people die in traffic accidents in the world

P(A)T attended the opening of the temporary exhibition at Stockholm Central Station organized by the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety, which represents 240 entities from around the world. The exhibition was intended to show the human side of the global road safety epidemic through a huge pile of 3,700 pairs of shoes and two crashed vehicles. Empty shoes as a powerful visual and symbolic representation of statistics that are often abstract and impersonal.

The facility was opened for several days to coincide with the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Stockholm on February 19-20, organized by the Swedish Government and the World Health Organization. In it, the commitments adopted by the different member entities were presented. During the period prior to the conference, the members of the NGOs of the Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety have been pressuring their governments through the #CommitToAct campaign, managing to gather 45 local and national commitments in 22 countries and have collected more than 50,000 signatures from citizens in 93 countries for the People’s Declaration, which calls for governments to commit to putting people first in road safety and act to save lives in the traffic.

Specifically, P(A)T obtained the commitment of

  • The signing of the commitment to improve the communication of news about traffic accidents with the Barcelona City Council and the Universities of Barcelona and the Autonomous University of Barcelona
  • The signing of the commitment to improve care for victims of trafficking with the Department of the Interior of the Generalitat de Catalunya

Etienne Krug, Director of the Department of Social Determinants at the World Health Organization, said: “It is difficult to understand why we continue to accept paying such a staggeringly high price for our mobility. While some countries have made significant progress in implementing proven safety measures road, in many settings, complacency and inaction still prevail. The key is political will. The key is for politicians to decide that road safety is high on their agendas.”

Our politicians must not wait until 2030 to implement these actions. Our job as NGOs is to put pressure on governments to meet the objective, being the voice of those who can no longer speak.

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