Road Safety 10 Principles

April 23, 2007

April 23rd through 29th 2007 marks the United Nations’ Global Road Safety week. This week of awareness raising, lobbying and international support was first called for in 2005 when the UN General Assembly passed resolution A/60/5.

Kjaer Group has been a key underwriter of road safety initiatives and awareness raising: the key project that we are supporting is the Fleet Safety Project, which is built in collaboration with Fleet Forum and other organizations. Please visit www.fleetforum.org/fleetsafety for more information.

In addition we have used the first two editions of CarNation, the only inter-agency magazine devoted to humanitarian fleet management, to raise awareness on road safety. This is no small effort, as CarNation has a subscription base of 2,000 professionals who are either “behind the wheel” or directly involved with thousands of vehicles.

Nevertheless we can do much more to support rolling back the tide of road traffic crashes, in particular with our customer segment where 65% of their fleets are based in Africa. As a grim reminder, road crashes sit between malaria and tuberculosis as the 9th global health threat. On an annual basis millions are killed and millions more are impacted by the vast economic ripple road crashes cause. And yet it seems that the priorities road safety organizations have are misaligned with the root cause of this trend. 95% of road related crashes are caused by “driver error.” Yet most international road safety initiatives are calling for improvement in road infrastructure, awareness raising and increased bilateral aid for road safety.

Against this backdrop it is clear that the “bottom of the pyramid,” or more clearly, local national drivers, are being overlooked. In collaboration with Fleet Forum and the Global Road Safety Partnership, Kjaer Group is launching the 10 Principles Campaign. The purpose of this campaign is to get practical road safety principles in front of “95% of the problem,” the drivers – and to do so now! Organizations must sign a declaration identifying the number of vehicles in their fleet, the country or countries where the vehicles are located and the languages they would like the 10 Principles printed in (available in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Vietnamese). Kjaer Group will then catalogue the request, translate the 10 Principles and distribute visor stickers, which should be placed above the drivers’ seat or visibly on the dashboard.

Through this effort we can get practical information on road safety in front of those who can have an immediate impact. To sign up to the 10 Principles campaign please email us at 10@kjaergroup.com or visit 10.kjaergroup.com or click to see an online version of the folder 10 Road Safety Principles.