UN Road Safety Fund Partnership Meeting
Statement on behalf of Global NCAP to attending Ministers and Government Representatives
“We’re here today because we all believe in the potential of partnership to save lives.
“Global NCAP has seen what collaboration can catalyse - in India, Africa, Latin America, and South-East Asia. Partnerships for vehicle safety have become agents of real change, but only because they are also agents of real challenge.
“This means a focus on two things: first, holding the industry to account on vehicle safety wherever issues are found. And second, challenging the inertia and delay in the adoption of standards that would otherwise be life-saving.
“The UN Global Plan includes nine of these vehicle safety standards, from seat belts to crash avoidance technologies like ESC, AEB, and motorcycle ABS. They’re proven, there’s wide consensus on their benefits - so why is there still an ‘adoption gap’ in their implementation?
“New research from Johns Hopkins, commissioned by Global NCAP, has put a number on what can be achieved if we fill that gap. Across the G20 half a million lives saved by 2030. Increasing to an astonishing 2.7 million lives that could be saved by 2050. That’s roughly equivalent to the number of people living and working here in Manhattan today. A city of lives saved.
“If we pledge anything during this week’s high level meetings, at this half-way milestone in the Decade of Action, can it be to deliver on what we already know works?
“Fill the ‘adoption gap’, create the regulatory push and in parallel NCAPs will help inform and empower consumer demand. Global NCAP knows that this push/pull model can succeed, and is committed to co-creating markets for safer vehicles with ambition, urgency and at scale.
“That is Global NCAP’s pledge, and it’s a promise I am proud to share in partnership with everyone in this room.
“Thank you.”
