Road Traffic Accidents is a Pandemic comparable to Covid-19 Pandemic

15 April 2020

Writing to compare Covid 19 with the global road safety challenge Professor George Yannis, a member of a 2019 Prince Michael International Road Safety Award-winning team, compares Covid-19 - a major pandemic with large number of victims (165.000 fatalities at mid-April 2020),  to the road traffic accidents pandemic (1,35 million fatalities and 50 million injuries per year globally).

He says: "...However, road traffic accidents pandemic has never being seeing by the global population and the Governments as such a serious health problem and traffic safety measures have never being considered so seriously and massively by the Governments neither accepted by the people, as with Covid-19 pandemic measures.

The effectiveness of Covid-19 pandemic massive measures for controlling the spread of the disease can be an excellent example for the need of more serious and massive measures on traffic accidents pandemic. Whereas road infrastructure safety improvement and safer vehicles penetration require several years before witnessing major results, traffic behaviour can certainly be controlled and improved much faster, if social acceptance is raised and political will is strong and sincere. Especially, managing efficiently (by police enforcement and massive campaigns) the five major traffic killers (speeding, mobile-phone-use, drink-and-drive, seat belt and helmet non-use) can be proved highly beneficial with a great number of lives saved even at short term."

His full article can be found here.