Youth leading the charge for road safety - YOURS Annual Report

24 June 2020

Floor Lieshout, Executive Director YOURS writes: 

'Before many young people can start realizing their dreams, they are taken from the world because of road crashes. Every day more than a thousand of them die on the roads and with them their dreams for a life and future. Most of these deaths are preventable, and it saddens me to tell you that I am not able to bring you a different message on the eve of YOURS’ 10-year anniversary in 2020.

While the Decade of Action for Road Safety is ending I am frustrated that we as a road safety community did not manage to make more impact by stabilizing and more importantly reducing global road traffic fatalities.

We can all agree that progress has been made. Some countries and cities have demonstrated remarkable results in terms of lives saved and injuries reduced. But I hope to see accelerated action on the proven evidence-based strategies for road safety globally as youth continue to pay a big cost for our failing mobility systems.

There is an urgent need for multidisciplinary collaboration and effective leadership across all sectors to reduce road traffic deaths and injuries.

Globally, we need to meaningfully involve youth as key stakeholders in this crisis. And if decision-makers are not coming to the youth, we will bring the youth to them.

While humanity is facing the coronavirus pandemic, we see the world coming together. Countries are working side-by-side and ramping up efforts to tackle this outbreak. And although it is uncertain how the world will look in the coming year, this might be the time to reset and reshape our future on how we travel for the better.'

Read more about the work of YOURS here.