The high cost of motorized mobility to society and public health
The high cost of motorized mobility to society and public health
Each year over 1 million people are killed and 50 million injured on roads around the world. Without new and effective action, deaths in low to middle-income countries are forecast to rise steeply in the next decades. Progress has slowed in recent years in many OECD countries See IRTAD, 2008.
The quality of daily road travel touches the lives of almost all European citizens either as road crash victims or their family, friends and colleagues. In the European Union, road crashes comprise over 90% of all transport crash deaths and crash costs and are the leading cause of death and hospital admission for people younger than 50 years. Within the EU, an international comparison of death rates in road traffic in the Annual Statistical Report 2007 (Figure 2 ) indicates a substantial variation in road safety performance. The socio-economic cost has been estimated at around 2% of EU countries' gross domestic product - around Euro 180 billion and twice the EU's annual budget [25]. A high price is currently being paid for motorized mobility in human and economic terms.