These are the precise form of city initiatives which the UN International Highway Security Week – kicking off on Monday – goals to have fun and promote.

First established in 2007, this 12 months’s week is devoted to the theme “Make strolling and biking secure.”

“Strolling and biking needs to be probably the most abnormal, and due to this fact, the most secure mode of transport,” mentioned Dr. Etienne Krug, who chairs the group often called the UN Highway Security Collaboration and directs the World Well being Group’s efforts to deal with social and financial circumstances which influence human well being.

Stats inform a narrative

In September 2020, the UN Common Meeting handed a decision which established the Decade of Motion for Highway Security 2021-2030 and set a aim to scale back street site visitors deaths by at the very least 50 % by the tip of the last decade.

Whereas progress has been made, WHO says that extra motion is required throughout all coverage sectors.

Every year, 1.2 million individuals are killed in street site visitors incidents, with pedestrians and cyclists accounting for over one-quarter of those deaths. These deaths should not distributed equally around the globe. Reasonably, 90 per cent of street site visitors deaths happen in low- and middle-income nations.

Furthermore, the UN estimates that at the very least 90 per cent of the world’s roads don’t meet pedestrian security requirements and solely 0.2 per cent of roads have devoted cycle lanes, leaving pedestrians and bikers dangerously uncovered.

A holistic strategy

Enhancing pedestrian and bike owner security has far-reaching advantages for communities, when it comes to well being, financial and environmental outcomes.

“Strolling and biking enhance well being and make cities extra sustainable. Each step and each trip [helps] to chop congestion, air air pollution and illness,” mentioned Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-Common.

Take, for instance, Fortaleza in Brazil – the five-fold enlargement of their biking community led to a 109 per cent improve in pedestrian exercise and made kids twice as prone to play exterior within the areas that had been redesigned.

In Norway, the Fyllingsdalstunnelen tunnel which is embellished with murals and guarded by safety cameras works to scale back carbon emissions and encourage strolling and biking.

To help the continuation of enhancements like these throughout UN Highway Security Week, WHO has offered policy-makers with a toolkit outlining tangible initiatives which embody integrating strolling and biking initiatives into different coverage sectors and constructing extra intensive infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists.

“We’d like [to] and we will do higher,” Dr Krug mentioned.