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This event took place on May 19, 2021

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00:11 [Binyam Reja]: Okay. Great. Good morning,
00:14 everyone. Good evening. good afternoon. First of all, I would like to apologize for the delay
00:20 for starting this webinar. We just had quite a number of technical problems,
00:25 but now we're all set to get started. Welcome to this high-level panel organized by the World Bank,
00:33 Global Road Safety. We're organizing this webinar in the context of the six UN Road Safety Week,
00:41 an important week. The title of this high-level panel is Streets for Life: Saving Lives on the
00:48 Road through Safe Speeds. Under the UN Global Road Safety Week, actually GRSF has already been
00:56 actively promoting this and already delivered the speed management webinar on April 26th.
01:04 [Binyam Reja]: Today we'll have
01:05 this high-level panel and tomorrow we'll have the launch of the Low-Speed Zone Guide event.
01:13 This interactive event will provide information and technical sessions on evidence-based road
01:18 safety knowledge to help manage speeds through infrastructure interventions,
01:22 effective enforcement, world informed leadership, targeted awareness measures
01:27 and vehicle technology. This is a high time to raise our collective voice against speeding
01:32 and showing global leadership and commitment. These activities will mark an important
01:37 milestone in the roadmap toward establishing the second decade of road action in road safety.
01:42 [Binyam Reja]: That's 2021 to 2030. As you're all aware,
01:47 there are very high costs for traffic injuries. Each year, we lose about 1.3 million people and
01:54 around 50 million injured, mostly in low and middle-income countries. Speed
02:00 is a key contributor to road crashes, taking over 650,000 lives annually. Hence the six UN
02:07 Global Road Safety Week, rightly focuses on this issue and brings a global spotlight for several
02:13 roads. We're very pleased to be at the forefront of this initiatives. We're very happy to be
02:18 partnering with a number of global organizations and GRSF is taking leadership at this front.
02:24 [Binyam Reja]: Today, we have very amazing
02:27 and distinguished speakers and panelists who are playing a critical role across the
02:33 world to make progress in road safety agenda. Let me introduce this distinguished panelists
02:40 in the order they come in this program. First, I'm delighted to introduce Pablo Fajnzylber
02:46 our acting Vice President and Director of Strategy for Infrastructure. Pablo will give the
02:53 opening remarks. Thank you Pablo first of all for being part of the series of events we've having
02:59 under the UN Global Road Safety Week and really appreciate your leadership and
03:04 support for road safety at the Bank. We will be taking questions from World Bank colleagues
03:11 on the GRSF role in speed management initiatives, including [inaudible] ... this presentation
03:18 is going to be presented by Radek Czapski and Alina Burlaçu. Burlacu. Sorry, Alina.
03:29 [Binyam Reja]: Radek is Senior Transport Specialist
03:30 and Program Manager for GRSF, and Alina is also Senior Transport Specialist and Program Manager
03:37 for the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS). After this
03:43 short presentation, we'll move to the high-level panel discussion. We're delighted to have Mr.
03:49 Etienne Krug from the World Health Organization. He's the Director for the Department of the
03:55 Social Determinants of Health. Then we are honored also to have Mr. Jean Todt, the UN Special Envoy
04:02 for Road Safety and FIA President. He has been at the forefront of this initiative in many forums.
04:08 [Binyam Reja]: Many of you sure you're aware of the
04:11 great work Mr. Todt has been doing on this aspect. We're also delighted to have Ms. Mamta Murthi
04:18 our Vice President for Human Development at the World Bank emphasizing as she will speak later
04:26 about the importance of human development and the linkages between road safety and human capital
04:31 and human development in general. We also have Susanna Zammataro, she's the Director
04:37 General for International Road Federation, an important stakeholder that's promoting
04:43 safe roads and promoting private partnership in this regard. We would hear from Susanna as well.
04:48 [Binyam Reja]: Last but not least is Mr. Hartwig Schafer
04:53 our Vice President for the South Asia Region at the World Bank. who has been promoting road
05:00 safety in South Asia region and globally. We're very delighted to have you Hart in this program.
05:05 I thank you all of the panel to join me in thanking the panelists for joining
05:10 us today. I'm sure the audience will get some insightful guidance on how to make [inaudible]
05:16 and how to save lives on the road. Now, I would like to request Pablo to make his opening remarks,
05:22 which will be followed by the presentation of Radek and Alina. Pablo, over to you please.
05:26 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: Thank you Ben. Thank you so much to you.
05:33 Thank you to our distinguished guests. We're very lucky to have two World Bank
05:38 vice presidents of these event, as well as distinguished representatives from the UN,
05:43 the International Road Federation, the World Health Organization. We're really lucky to have
05:49 all of you today, and we hope that this will be a very fruitful debate that will be very
05:55 informative to all the participants. I am also delighted to do this in the context of this year,
06:02 UN Global Road Safety Week, which as we know is themed, Streets for Life: #Love30.
06:09 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: Under this year's Global Road Safety Week,
06:14 the World Bank Road Safety Facility is promoting a series of knowledge products that aim to advocate
06:22 and call for action on speed management in our streets worldwide. These initiatives will mark
06:30 an important milestone towards establishing the second Decade of Action in road safety. 2021,
06:37 2030. Interactive events such as the one we're holding here today, aim at sharing
06:44 and exchanging evidence-based knowledge on what is proven to work in road safety interventions.
06:51 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: Specifically, our focus today is
06:55 on interventions that help manage speeds through infrastructure investments, effective enforcement,
07:03 well informed leadership, targeted awareness measures, and new vehicle technology.
07:10 To focus on speed management is related first to the fact that this year, the UN Global Road
07:18 Safety Week, advocates for the implementation of speed management strategies. This is especially
07:24 important in places where we have vulnerable road users present and where there is clear evidence
07:31 that a speed of 30 kilometers per hour is required to produce safe outcomes for these road users.
07:39 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: As we will hear today, vehicle speeds
07:42 play a significant role in road safety outcomes, leading to increased deaths and serious injuries
07:50 every year. Speed ... This is very important, also plays an important role in other societal
07:57 developments, such as local air pollution, global greenhouse gas emissions, noise pollution and
08:06 active travel promotion. All these issues have important links to broader health and development
08:13 outcomes. It is thus essential to highlight these linkages between speed, safety, air pollution
08:22 and human capital development. This is because recognizing these interconnections, can lead
08:29 to increased awareness of the synergies at hand and can help bring about greater policy action.
08:36 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: And also ultimately increase benefits
08:39 for the population if these issues are considered together. As we will discuss in a few minutes,
08:46 there are cost effective solutions that we can use to better manage speeds to both improve
08:53 road user's safety and to also achieve these broader societal outcomes. The World Bank has
09:00 been implementing many of these solutions as part of our projects. As we move into this new Decade
09:07 of Action, we hope that this event helps bring global focus to the need for practical approaches
09:16 to engage governments and the private sector to first invest in road safety, but at the same time,
09:24 harness data to inform implementation and calibration of our interventions.
09:29 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: Finally, to ensure that synergies
09:32 with other development agendas, especially the one related to the human development issues,
09:39 are well taken into account. As you know, road safety has been an important priority
09:45 for the World Bank. We have aimed at playing a global leadership role in this space through
09:52 the activities of the Global Road Safety Facility that is now more than 15 years old. As an example
09:59 of our latest work in this area, we recently launched a new Speed Management Hub website
10:07 that contains information and resources on these topic. Our Global Road Safety Facility is also
10:14 leading international efforts to produce a new global guide on the effective management of speed.
10:20 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: This guide will complement other global resources
10:26 by providing up-to-date information on the following, first, the importance of effective
10:32 speed management in terms of safety, but also as we mentioned, broader societal benefits.
10:38 Second, on ways to set effective speed limits for different road environments. finally,
10:45 on methods to support these speed limits through the improvement of infrastructure,
10:50 but also the design enforcement of policies of various natures.
10:56 Let me to take this opportunity to invite everyone to our event tomorrow mentioned by Ben earlier.
11:02 This event tomorrow May 20, will be about empowering communities to manage speed.
11:09 At this event, we will officially launch another product, the Low-Speed Zone Guide.
11:16 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: Which has been produced jointly between the
11:18 World Bank, GRSF and WRI. This guide will aim at helping communities and decision makers to plan,
11:28 design and implement effective speed-related interventions specifically in built up areas.
11:36 This Low-Speed Zone Guide will complement the Global Speed Management Guide,
11:42 which we plan to launch later this year, but which we will make available tomorrow
11:48 at the webinar for a preview. Thank you once again to our guests and to all the participants
11:56 in today's event. I really look forward to hearing today's presentation
12:01 and having a very productive panel discussion. Thank you very much and back to you Ben.
12:09 [Binyam Reja]:
12:19 Okay, great. Thank you Pablo for these great opening
12:28 remarks and setting the context for discussion today. So now we will just
12:32 move straight to the presentation by Radek and Alina. Over to you guys. Thank you.
12:52 [Alina Burlacu]: [silence] Radek, We cannot hear you.
13:19 [Alina Burlacu]: So it seems that
13:21 my colleague Radek... Radek, can you hear us now?
13:32 I think he might have some connection problems. So I'll start with the
13:38 presentation and finally ask Radek to step in whenever he has a good connection.
13:47 So good morning, afternoon or evening to all distinguished guests and participants connecting
13:52 from all around the world. My name is Alina Burlacu and together with my colleague Radek
13:56 Czapski we were supposed together to deliver the presentation and address it briefly today.
14:02 [Alina Burlacu]: As most of you know,
14:04 speeding is estimated to be a direct cause or major contributor to around 50% of global road
14:10 death, which translates into 650,000 lives annually. that is why the World
14:16 Bank and the Global Road Safety Facility are particularly committed to tackle this challenge.
14:22 This event organizing the context of the speed management focus of the UN
14:27 Global Road Safety Week is part of our global quest for safe speeds, but before we provide
14:33 some more details on our speed focused actions, let me briefly introduce you our engagement.
14:40 So first and foremost, we are a global road safety fund hosted by the World Bank since 2006.
14:46 [Alina Burlacu]: Thanks to generosity of our donors,
14:48 we are all recognized at the bottom of the slide we managed to attract almost 74 million United
14:55 States dollars (USD) for a very diverse set of research advisory and capacity building projects.
15:03 But at the same time we are a global knowledge and expertise center, which provided support to over
15:08 80 developing countries. We are very grateful to all our donors for their ongoing support,
15:13 and obviously hope to continue and expand our collaboration to achieve ambitious goals
15:18 of the current UN Decade of Action in road safety. Thanks to chairs and funded direct
15:24 support to the developing countries and guidance to the World Bank fund and investment projects.
15:28 [Alina Burlacu]: Thousands of us have been and will be saved in the
15:31 next decades, but there is still a long way to go in cooperation with our global regional partners,
15:38 such as WHO, MDBs, UN partners, NGOs, research institutions and academia. We are also glad
15:46 that more than half of GRSF funding have gone to initiatives implemented by this partner.
15:54 Our attention is focused on low and middle income countries and our main types of engagements
15:59 range from promoting strong regional and country level road safety leadership and influencing
16:04 decision makers through advising and promoting proven result-focused
16:09 safety interventions among developing country professionals to funding external
16:14 partners in the research and knowledge exchange activities in low and middle income countries.
16:18 [Alina Burlacu]: In parallel, GRSF provides
16:21 regular support to World Bank teams, in assuring safe solutions to World Bank loan funded projects,
16:28 and thanks to our donors along with our support to the Bloomberg Philanthropies
16:32 Initiative for Global Road Safety and our multi-donor trust fund grant program, we are
16:37 advancing our long research activities, which focus on the most efficient ways of addressing
16:42 key road safety challenges of developing countries, including in speed management.
16:48 In recognition of our efficient delivery of diverse road safety activities, the GRSF has won
16:53 three prestigious Prince Michael awards in 2020, which is a very nice and re-energizing surprise.
17:03 [Alina Burlacu]: Before I go into more details on the
17:05 Speed Management Hub, I would just like to briefly underline that speed management was and is among
17:12 top priority areas for GRSF activity. Let me just briefly mention a few of the most recent examples.
17:21 Our research on infrastructure related speed management measure is the priority theme of this
17:29 year GRSF Call for proposal, which is advancing now and successful brands to be confirmed in June.
17:35 Also, speed is among the driving factors influencing economic analysis of World Bank
17:41 projects. Two of the GRSF recent practical guides share international good practices regarding
17:48 effective speed management measures, is one of them being the guide for road safety intervention,
17:53 evidence of what works and what doesn't work.
17:55 [Alina Burlacu]: And also the guide
17:56 for determining readiness for speed cameras and other automated speed enforcement systems
18:02 prepared jointly with our partners, the Global Road Safety Partnership or GRSP.
18:09 Another GRSF managed program is the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety,
18:14 or also called BIGRS which spreads over a six years period and aims saving 600,000
18:21 lives and prevent up to 22 million injuries.
18:25 World Bank GRSF is one of the safer ways and safer mobility partners, and also the host of
18:30 the Speed Management Hub of the initiative, which was officially launched a couple of months ago.
18:34 [Alina Burlacu]: Some key engagements that GRSF has under the Speed
18:38 Management Hub, include provision of speed-related technical expertise and also preparation and
18:44 publication of various speed-related studies, success stories and guides together with knowledge
18:49 sharing and dissemination. One of the main outputs of the Speed Management Hub is a dedicated online
18:55 platform, aiming to be a one stop shop in terms of speed-related knowledge. This platform provides
19:01 evidence-based road safety knowledge to help manage speed through infrastructure intervention,
19:06 effective enforcement, targeted awareness measure and also vehicle technology.
19:11 [Alina Burlacu]: The platform also allows the wide dissemination
19:14 of speed related frequently asked questions and myth together with a rich library, latest news and
19:20 best practices on this topic. Then also we have several myths busted on our hub platform. I'd like
19:28 here to mention the number one myth related to speed, which is that speed isn't actually a major
19:35 cause of road crashes or that changing my speed won't have any impact on safety. The reason why
19:42 this is a myth is very simple as the relationship between speed and crash outcome has been captured
19:48 in various models, most notably Nilsson's Power Model that you can see on the screen.
19:53 [Alina Burlacu]: This shows that 1% increase
19:56 in average speed results in approximately 4% increase in fatal crash frequency. Basically,
20:03 this model shows how decreasing average speed by only a few kilometer per hour can significantly
20:08 reduce the risk and severity of crashes. Maybe this doesn't seem like much, but in practice,
20:15 if we reduce the speed by 2%, meaning for example in urban areas from 50 to 49 kilometer per hour,
20:22 and similar changes on other roads globally, we would be saving over 100,000 lives from road
20:28 crashes each and every year. Imagine the impact if we would go for a 10%
20:34 reduction, we would be preventing over half a million lives lost in road crushes.
20:39 [Alina Burlacu]: Even more than this,
20:41 adopting 30 kilometer per hour speed limit in cities, will make Vision Zero reality and
20:47 have no more lives lost in road crashes as Oslo, Norway's capital achieved in 2019. But for this
20:55 political commitment and continuation of programs across political parties
20:59 are crucial, together with community support. one good example in this regard is Bogota. Bogota is
21:06 a success story that exemplifies the power of reducing speed limits. In 2017, the World Bank,
21:12 GRSF, iRAP and local partners assessed almost 200 kilometers of roads across the city and used
21:19 the data to perform a series of scenario tests to see what the impact of changing speeds would be.
21:24 [Alina Burlacu]: This helped build the
21:26 evidence to support a move to reduce and strictly enforce speed limits. Later in 2018, the city was
21:33 convinced to reduce and actively enforce speed limits from 60 to 50 kilometer per hour on
21:38 five major corridors, which together accounted for a quarter of the city's total road death.
21:44 The effect was dramatic. According to the early reporting, month-on-month death dropped by 34%.
21:52 The success in this corridor encouraged the city to later roll out a 50 kilometer per hour speed
21:57 limit in all arterial roads in the city. So this was a really good place to start from
22:03 and build on the case that lower speeds save lives.
22:06 [Alina Burlacu]: I should also add here that the city
22:08 has done a lot of other good work, including on bicycle lanes and pedestrian crossings at schools.
22:14 Bloomberg Philanthropies through their initiative, supported the transition between administration
22:19 and political parties, making sure these lower speed limits not only stay in place,
22:24 but are also adopted on other streets. The GRSF has more upcoming resources to support enhanced
22:32 speed management. We have a Low-Speed Zone Guide and the Global Speed Management Guide
22:36 that Pablo was just mentioning both prepared together with the World Resources Institute,
22:41 and we hope you can join the interactive event tomorrow and learn more about them.
22:44 [Alina Burlacu]: We are also working on a road safety calculator,
22:48 which is a planning level tool to inform decision makers on road safety improvements and
22:52 investments, including five interventions of speed, which you can see on your screen.
22:57 Last but not least, a research analysis on the economics and benefits of speed management
23:02 is ongoing, aiming to improve our understanding of the wider socioeconomic gains that can be obtained
23:09 in the context of low and middle income countries through sound speed management. So I will end
23:14 my presentation here and I will invite you to check our website and reach out to us for any
23:19 questions you might have related to speed or road safety in general. Thank you. Ben, over to you.
23:30 [Binyam Reja]: Okay, great. Thank you Alina for the presentation
23:33 and laying out what the work being done in GRSF and Bloomberg Philanthropies. It's also great that
23:39 you have evidence [inaudible] reducing speed and moving to 30 kilometers per hour speed zone.
23:46 I also like what you said about the need for political commitment and community
23:51 participation. So, well with us today, we have important policy makers and leaders in their
23:58 sphere. So, let's have this discussion how we can actually galvanize community awareness, ownership
24:07 and political commitment for really reducing speed on our roads and thereby saving lives.
24:14 [Binyam Reja]: Let me now welcome our distinguished
24:16 panelists to our virtual table. As a reminder, we have Mr. Etienne Krug from WHO, Jean Todt
24:25 from the UN Special Envoy for road safety, Mamta Murthi, our Vice President for Human Development,
24:33 Susanna Zammataro, IRF Director General and Hart Schafer, Vice President for South Asia
24:41 Region in the World Bank. So we'll have a series of questions as I'm going to give
24:47 a few questions and I'll let the panelists answer. So the topics we'll discuss today are
24:53 around the Decade of Action for road safety, on rebuilding momentum in the new COVID world
25:00 and linking development agenda and attending synergies, especially with human development.
25:06 [Binyam Reja]: If we have time,
25:07 we will also discuss about new technology and knowledge for moving forward. So let's start
25:13 then on this question on the Decade of Action for road safety. So let me start with Mr. Krug,
25:20 who has been leading efforts on the preparation of the new Decade of Action for road safety.
25:26 So Mr. Krug, we have just finished the first Decade of Action for road safety and we are
25:32 now entering a new Decade of Action. Can you tell us a little bit on what this have been,
25:38 the key challenge for the first Decade of Action and for the main lessons that we have learned
25:45 from this Decade of Action that could be applied for the new Decade of Action? Mr. Krug.
25:51 [Etienne Krug]: Thanks so much. First of all, happy
25:54 UN Global Road Safety Week to all of you and thanks to our colleagues in the World Bank for
26:00 organizing this important discussion on road safety in general, on speed in particular,
26:06 and on this #Love30 concepts of reducing speed in urban areas. Yes, indeed we just finished
26:15 the first Decade of Action and we've seen quite big differences in what has been achieved
26:24 in some countries versus others. We've seen important decreases in road traffic deaths in
26:30 Russia, in Brazil, in the European union ranging from 20% all the way to 50%.
26:36 [Etienne Krug]: So that's a lot of success
26:41 in just 10 years showing that it's possible. The key to these achievements really has been
26:49 political will. A decision at the highest level of government at the national or even
26:54 international level in the EU to really address this issue and have substantial reductions.
27:01 And that of course they put in place the things that we know are needed,
27:05 good laws, an enforcement, including on speed, good infrastructure, vehicles, trauma care, solid
27:13 data collection, et cetera. But this issue of political will at the highest level has been key.
27:19 [Etienne Krug]: We've seen in other countries that this
27:22 politic will wasn't there, and in most low income countries and low and middle income countries,
27:28 we have still seen an increase in the number of deaths showing that
27:33 more efforts are needed. So at the beginning of this decade, we are quite convinced that we can
27:38 achieve the proposed reduction of 50% of deaths around the world, if we put in place those things
27:46 that we know work. If we add to that some innovation, which includes a modal shift,
27:52 moving away from a car-based transportation system to one that is more healthy, walking, cycling and
28:01 public transport should get a much bigger space in our transportation system. But to do that we need
28:08 every head of state, every head of government to take the decision that enough is enough.
28:13 [Etienne Krug]: That we don't
28:14 want to continue to pay this huge price for our mobility. Thank you.
28:19 [Binyam Reja]:
28:24 Great. Thank you Mr. Krug for that [inaudible] the political commitment. When we move... I just want
28:34 to follow up with you then, when we move to the new Decade of Action, do you see the inclusion
28:42 of speed management to be included there given [inaudible] how can we ensure that this is the
28:50 core part of new Decade of Action? In particular, I really like how moving to public transport to
28:58 active transport and avoiding [inaudible] being important, because that also is actually a way
29:05 to decarbonize the transport system and reducing greenhouse gas emission. So whatever we do in road
29:10 safety, actually has carried a lot of synergies with other sectors, which we can discuss later.
29:15 [Binyam Reja]: But just on the speed management, well how you
29:18 would see it being included and how can we ensure it to be included on the second Decade of Action?
29:23 [Etienne Krug]: Indeed, if we reduce speed
29:26 and if we move to more active and healthy modes of transport, we will reduce emissions,
29:33 we will reduce noise, we will have more opportunities to move, which is much healthier
29:40 in terms of prevention of cancer, cardiovascular disease. So yes, there's a lot of additional
29:45 benefits. To do that we need to tackle speed. So speed is a central element of the new plan
29:51 that has been developed for the Decade of Action, which by the way, is on the web right now for the
29:57 whole month of May for an open consultation process for all member states, UN agencies,
30:04 civil society organizations to comment on. But speed is already included and it's central.
30:09 [Etienne Krug]: Addressing speed, it's probably
30:11 very important to mention that addressing speed of course requires good road safety legislation
30:17 and enforcement and information to the public, but it's not only about that, it is also about
30:22 modifying infrastructure, making sure that the infrastructure is built, and that's very important
30:28 of course for the World Bank to keep in mind. I'm sure Susana will talk about that too, but
30:34 make sure that infrastructure is built, so that speeding is simply not possible. We know how to
30:41 build a road these days so that you can't speed anymore. We also know how to make sure that there
30:46 are sidewalks, bicycle lanes elevated, separated so that people can walk and cycle safely.
30:52 [Etienne Krug]: It's also about
30:53 vehicles and make sure that vehicles cannot speed too much. The technology is there now,
30:59 so that we call also on vehicle manufacturing to play their role. So all in all, yes it is
31:06 definitely part of the new Decade of Action and more than it's a central element of the new plan.
31:11 [Binyam Reja]: Okay, great. That's really great to hear
31:16 that we have it front and center in the second Decade of Action. Okay. Now let's move to our
31:26 second panelist. Mr. Todt, welcome Mr. Todt, I think you've been a really great leader
31:34 on road safety globally. It's really good and delightful to have you here. I wanted to
31:41 ask you, actually, what the expectations are, looking at implementing and achieving
31:46 the goal of the second Decade of Action. You heard Mr. Krug laying out what that includes,
31:52 it would be great to hear from you what your expectations are and what do you consider are
31:58 the main principles in which decision makers and key stakeholders should be focusing their time,
32:04 energy and limited resource in achieving the Decade of Action. Over to you. Mr. Todt.
32:13 [Jean Todt]: Thank you very much and happy
32:18 to be sharing this important World Bank meeting with my colleague during this UN Road Safety Week.
32:30 I thank the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility for bringing us all together. Road safety needs a
32:39 concerted default from all stakeholder around the world. While we made gains into the first Decade
32:46 of Action and Etienne reminded a while ago, my expectation is to have even greater gains
32:53 in the second decade by addressing disparity and gaps. In what areas could we do better?
33:01 We know that 90% of our fatality than injuries occur in low and middle income countries.
33:08 [Jean Todt]: Therefore with our limited resources and time,
33:12 we must focus on providing support to those most affected communities. This will be essential to
33:21 drive us to reach our goals in the second decade. Financing platform like the UN Road Safety Fund
33:29 and Global Road Safety Facility are key mechanisms to provide this type of support. We know that we
33:37 do not place enough value on all elements of our road transport system. We need to do a better
33:43 job of engaging and holding the private sector accountable, including vehicle manufacturers,
33:50 investors in transport and infrastructures, ride share providers, beverage companies and so on.
33:56 [Jean Todt]: All actors have a
33:59 responsibility in building the safety system that protects every road users, especially
34:06 the most vulnerable. We know that road safety benefits many sustainable development goals,
34:12 and can be transformative for the environment, healthcare sectors, sustainable cities,
34:18 human rights amongst others. We must do a better job of showcasing these linkages.
34:24 This will drive more investments and priority among the government. We also know that achieving
34:31 the LDG target 3.6 to half road death and injuries can only be reached by achieving LDG. 11.2
34:40 which is to provide access to safe, sustainable and affordable transport to all by 2030.
34:48 [Jean Todt]: For this, I must raise the importance of
34:51 increasing access to safe public transit, which also delivers on our climate goals.
35:01 [Binyam Reja]: Okay, great. Thank you,
35:04 Mr. Todt for the very sharp way you really articulated the linkages between improving speed,
35:13 road safety and the wider development goals for environment, for sustainable cities,
35:19 human capital. That is good in that respect. So thank you. So
35:25 now let's move to Mrs. Susanna Zammataro from IRF. You're a very important step,
35:34 Mrs. Zammataro for the [inaudible]. So I wanted to really understand from your point of view, what do
35:40 you see as some of the key challenge or missed opportunities from the first Decade of Action,
35:45 especially this has been an issue we're discussing today, and what are some of the lessons from this?
35:50 [Binyam Reja]: What did we really
35:51 miss in the first Decade of Action that we could have done better in making sure
35:57 our roads have the appropriate speed and are safe.
36:01 [Susanna Zammataro]:
36:05 Thank you very much. I hope you can all hear me well. Yes? Thank you for having me this
36:12 afternoon and thanks to the GRSF for organizing this panel and giving me the opportunity as
36:17 well to share the floor with the stage with such passionate leaders, when it comes to road safety.
36:25 I would like to start answering your question most probably by underlining first of all the
36:31 tremendous achievements made during the first Decade of Action in terms of building the body
36:36 of knowledge around road safety and around the key risk factors such as speed. We have today
36:43 robust research findings, providing a strong evidence and recommendation for
36:49 a system of say speed limits for the different type of road environments.
36:54 [Susanna Zammataro]: I hope we'll have a chance to later on
36:56 the conversation to back to this. Although all the benefits are scientifically proved, no low income
37:04 countries today and only 3% of middle income countries have 30 kilometers per hour or less
37:11 speed limit for urban roads. Of course that tells us that there's so much work that we still need to
37:17 do. Campaigns like the one we are currently experimenting this week, the ongoing Streets for
37:25 Life and the #Love30 campaign help tremendously I have to say in changing that narrative around
37:33 speed, which often is a very political debate to the extent it becomes a really just debate almost.
37:40 [Susanna Zammataro]: In general, change the way we talk about
37:43 road safety and it's exactly what the previous Decade of Action has been trying to do very hard,
37:52 and through the concept and this whole concept of the safe system approach.
37:57 Building the understanding and road safety is a shared responsibility as some of the
38:02 previous speakers have mentioned. So even when you just look at speed,
38:06 whether you are a driver or you are a policy maker or law enforcement agent,
38:10 or a road designer, your responsibility does not increase or decrease accordingly.
38:17 [Susanna Zammataro]: Another key lessons learn is that speed
38:20 management really relies on a coordinated and I would say multi-sectoral efforts that as Etienne
38:27 was saying involves infrastructure planning and design the legislation and traffic policy, the
38:35 vehicle safety standards, as well as a combination at the same time of public awareness and deterrent
38:42 based for example on automated enforcement. One of the key recommendations that we got from the
38:48 Stockholm minister on the declaration was that, of course, managing speed to safe levels must be
38:55 a priority in the next decade, but also address it as it has been said in a very holistic manner.
39:02 [Susanna Zammataro]: This is especially important
39:04 for low and middle income countries, where we know that there is in general insufficient
39:09 road safety management capacity, or low capacity for speed enforcement
39:16 for vehicle safety standards, for fleet monitoring and public awareness. We can only really attain
39:24 impressive results when these interventions come all together and are combined and made possible
39:31 by as well appropriate levels of human and financial resource. Concluding in terms of
39:37 missed opportunities, which was initially your probably question, I would say that
39:43 if two things come to my mind, one was probably importance to engage youth and the private sector.
39:50 [Susanna Zammataro]: It was only towards the end of the Decade of
39:53 Action that we have seen growing attention to and also space I would say, being made for these two
39:59 fundamental stakeholders and the potential of the contribution of the private sector to road safety,
40:06 including of course on this specific issue of speed still remains largely untapped today.
40:12 I hope we'll have a chance to come back later to this during the debate.
40:16 [Binyam Reja]: Yeah.
40:19 Great. Thank you so much Susanna. That's great. Really showing [inaudible] the missed opportunity
40:27 engaging with the private sector [inaudible] is a key one. This is why I think in the second Decade
40:33 of Action, moving forward, engaging the private sector in different circumstances,
40:39 including the financing platform, John Todt mentioned would be key. The multi-sectoral aspect
40:46 is also really important. Okay. Now I'd like to now bring in Mr. Hart Schafer our Vice
40:53 President for South Asia and ask him what we've been doing especially in South Asia Region.
40:58 [Binyam Reja]: We've been doing quite
41:00 a number of activities over the several years,
41:03 and perhaps if you can maybe give us a little bit of a flavor of what we've been doing in terms
41:08 of policies, interventions related to road safety management. Hart over to you please.
41:14 [Hartwig Schafer]: Thank you Benyam and good afternoon. Good evening.
41:18 Good morning to our colleagues and friends who are part of this important event, and thanks
41:22 for inviting me to this UN global Road Safety Week event. For South Asia Road Safety is a key issue.
41:32 South Asia accounts for 10% of the global vehicle fleet, but for 25% of all road crash death. So it
41:40 is a development issue because road crashes hit the most vulnerable segments of the society.
41:47 Very often cyclists, pedestrians in low income and poor communities, we are making that a priority,
41:56 but when we think of South Asia at this time of course, our thoughts are with the people
42:02 of South Asia who are traveling with a devastating second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
42:08 [Hartwig Schafer]: What the pandemic has shown
42:11 is a clear link between road safety and overall management of health and public health systems,
42:19 because road crashes, clearly the injuries are taking away scars capacity that is now needed for
42:26 the people to be treated for COVID-19. So if we improve road safety, then we are actually freeing
42:32 up resources when the next pandemic is going to hit. State-of-the-art emergency care services
42:39 are good for resilience against the pandemic, but they're also very important to help with
42:44 trauma victims after road crashes. One of our latest reports on traffic crash injuries and
42:50 disabilities in India, have shown that one of the key factors that we need to, or key gaps we need
42:57 to address is access to medical treatment and safety nets for most crash victims.
43:03 [Hartwig Schafer]: So the first hour after a
43:04 crash we all call the golden hour that can save life, can make a difference between
43:10 remaining alive or being part of the statistics. What is encouraging is that countries in South
43:17 Asia are recognizing that. I want to give you an example of what I see as a game changer. And
43:25 Etienne alluded to it. We need to get to the highest political level with this. It is not
43:31 just something that is in the transport sector. It is an issue that is important for everybody in the
43:39 political cabinet, in the government and two and a half years ago, when we had our annual meetings,
43:46 I had asked for a two pager that I was showing to everyone, or the ministers of finance.
43:50 [Hartwig Schafer]: And I was telling them
43:52 how much they were actually losing in terms of GDP. We know the number is anywhere between
43:59 three and 5% of GDP loss because of lack of road safety or because of road death and
44:08 injuries. I think that gets the attention of the ministers of finance and what we
44:13 have seen in subsequent to that is that they are pulling together cross cabinet working groups,
44:20 commissions. We have seen that together when I was with my friend Jean Todt, when we visited
44:25 Bangladesh and Nepal, there the ministry of transport, but it also included the ministry
44:31 of health, ministry of education, interior and police, because they all have a stake in this.
44:36 [Hartwig Schafer]: I think this cross sectoral
44:38 approach is absolutely critical, and it shows results. If we look at Tamil Nadu for instance,
44:45 Tamil Nadu was able to reduce fatalities by 25% in only three years. It was because they invested
44:55 in trauma care centers, they invested in speed enforcement systems and they
45:00 brought all the stakeholders together to own this challenge. Similar efforts are going on in India
45:06 and in Bangladesh. Both have recently adopted landmark reform and legislation to address road
45:14 safety and transport management. We are also looking in engaging in Sri Lanka and Pakistan
45:20 to build better institutions and to manage road safety, not only at the federal level,
45:26 but also at the state or the provincial level, which is very important.
45:29 [Hartwig Schafer]: In countries with the federal system,
45:31 we need to address it at the federal, the state and the municipal level. I think on
45:36 the municipal level, we'll talk about that in a little while. What is important here is,
45:40 and I'm very proud of this, that we are working as a World Bank very closely with the UN family
45:46 in country, but also at the corporate level. That is important for the advocacy, and it helps us to
45:52 bring together our joint power and efforts and comparative advantage to address this
45:59 everywhere from enforcement, capacity building to infrastructure investments and to institution
46:05 building. So with, let me finish here this first question, but I'm very happy to be here.
46:11 [Binyam Reja]: Great. Thank you Hart for your passion
46:15 and for your support, it's really encouraging to hear that the bank has been at the forefront of
46:22 addressing the road safety problem in South Asia and to actually see the example you give about
46:28 Tamil Nadu. I also really like the evidence that you presented to the finance ministers,
46:35 really this [inaudible] policy dialogue is what is really important to show them what is the cost in
46:41 economic terms, because that's [inaudible] what you really understand from Finance
46:44 ministers in many countries. So to get them to buy into this, to get a cross-sector cabinet,
46:52 multi-sector intervention, is really important and you are showing us that [inaudible]
46:57 and that could be replicated in any in other, around the world. So this is really great.
47:03 [Binyam Reja]: Okay. So moving on. So now
47:06 let's talk about ... Hart you mention about COVID in South Asia and India in particular in Nepal.
47:15 Of course our thoughts are there with our colleagues, friends and all the people with really
47:20 this devastating COVID that they're going through. So they're rebuilding thinking now, hopefully
47:33 in a post COVID world, hopefully it'll come soon to our developing countries to South Asia,
47:39 but I wanted to have a little bit of a discussion as we enter a post COVID world,
47:45 how we will see road management and safety to be integrated into a green recovery that
47:52 many countries would take. I'm going to ask John Todt first on this question, especially
48:01 as it relates to how we will move forward, how you see we can make.
48:09 [Binyam Reja]: So, as you would remember John, we had
48:14 this third global minister of meeting in Stockholm that actually was creating quite a lot of momentum
48:21 about road safety, about speed management. Now this was of course countries now get diverted
48:30 in focusing COVID-19 pandemic, but how do you see we can actually then continue to create this
48:40 awareness and momentum to all the stakeholders about road safety, even while we are in
48:49 COVID context or as we enter the post COVID world. Over to you Mr. Todt.
48:58 [Jean Todt]: Thank you. Thank you for that. In terms
49:02 of the question about COVID-19 overshadowing our work in road safety, I will challenge
49:09 us to instead focus on how it has provided new opportunities to achieve our global goals. It has
49:18 forced us to be agile and responsive. I would like to highlight three reflections to support this.
49:27 First, the world continued to rely on mobility during the pandemic, which means the importance of
49:34 road safety was always there. 40 months ago, when curfews and lockdown were being imposed globally,
49:42 we were not yet sure how COVID-19 pandemic will affect road safety and transport.
49:48 [Jean Todt]: Today, we see how the pandemic
49:51 has had a significant impact on the world's mobility sector. Restrictions have resulted
49:57 in everyone moving far less than previously, and about public transport and mass transit was
50:05 hit the hardest. But we have also seen that even during a global health crisis, the world
50:12 continued to rely on mobility, the movement of essential workers, transport of food and goods,
50:19 delivery services, dissemination of vaccines and humanitarian and emergency relief services,
50:26 have only been possible with a safe, reliable and connected transport. Those in the poorer places,
50:36 which were also hard hit by the virus, have not shared our privilege to stay at home.
50:42 [Jean Todt]: It makes road safety more relevant than ever.
50:46 Second, some of the shifts in mobility pattern and new [inaudible] designed as a result of COVID-19
50:53 response, has propelled us closer to some targets, especially in greener and more active mobility.
51:01 Because of the change in landscape as a result of COVID-19 response,
51:06 we have seen any policy makers, especially in cities,
51:10 review their street designs, their road safety policies, and modified their mobility system.
51:17 For example, many cities redesigned street to increase cycling, walking and [inaudible] access.
51:25 This reported safer mobility and concurrently prevented the spread of the virus.
51:30 [Jean Todt]: What COVID-19 has shown us is the
51:34 importance of an integrated approach for making cities more sustainable, resilient and inclusive.
51:42 If we can position road safety effectively, we can access the crisis stimulus packages
51:48 that are supporting the green transition, as well as the expansion of sustainable infrastructure
51:56 and transport. Additionally, with a change in demand and use of transport,
52:01 COVID-19 has also pushed us to integrate more digital technology to deliver new needs and roads.
52:09 [Jean Todt]: It has also given a bigger role to automation.
52:13 Going forward, mobility operators across the sector will need a strong ability to
52:19 forecast [inaudible] and adjust route planning and staffing in response becoming more digital, more
52:27 collaborative and more innovative and continuing to transform the transport sector for the better.
52:33 Third and last, we have seen the commonality between the pandemic and the road safety, in
52:40 both it effects on the most vulnerable. We should roll on this as we reposition our effort during
52:47 COVID-19 recovery. The vulnerable people are the ones who are most impacted when a crisis hits.
52:54 [Jean Todt]: COVID-19 response and achieving road safety will
52:58 benefit the most vulnerable. It is a spirit of social inclusion that we should rebuild better on
53:05 both fronts. Furthermore, access to safe mobility helps the most vulnerable access to decent work
53:12 and education, addresses the gender equality in access to mobility, and it also helps us rebuild
53:20 for more sustainable cities and communities, therefore to address speed is also covered.
53:27 [Binyam Reja]:
53:30 Great. That was really great Mr. Todt. I see you see also opportunity basically in the COVID
53:39 crisis. It's interesting, the word crisis in the Chinese language has two characters. It's called
53:47 [Chinese 00:53:46] the first character says it's danger and the second character is an opportunity.
53:52 So in any crisis you have danger and opportunity. So I think we have to really seize this moment,
54:00 this green recovery to position road safety as a key development issue that
54:08 can actually ... has a much more impact. That was really great. Now I'm going to bring Mamta
54:21 Murthi our Vice President for Human Development
54:24 to speak a little bit about the human development dimension of COVID-19 and ... road safety issue.
54:34 [Binyam Reja]: So, Mamta you know that over 60 million deaths
54:40 have now occurred globally since the first fatal road crash that occured more than a century ago,
54:47 which are speed related. We expect a further 25% increase on this number over the next decade
54:55 if concrete actions are not taken. In the public health world, this has been considered a silent
55:01 pandemic since 2004. COVID was recognized as a pandemic early last year and has seen a massive
55:09 and rapid mobilization of governments and private sector to address this issue. What lessons should
55:16 we take from COVID-19 response when comparing this two public health pandemics? How can we
55:23 [inaudible] a silent pandemic and how we can get a massive response [inaudible]?
55:30 [Mamta Murthi]: Thank you Ben.
55:37 Hello to everyone who's on this call. It's a real pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
55:46 Let me say three things in response to your question. First of all, we need to acknowledge the
55:53 massive casualties that occur because of lack of road safety. I believe when I was looking at
56:01 these numbers last night, it's 1.5 million deaths a year and 50 million accidents a year. So this is
56:10 no small number, this is staggering. While we are focused on deaths, both in the case of road safety
56:17 and in the case of COVID-19, I think we also need to think about the lingering effects on people and
56:26 on their quality of life, both the survivors of road accidents and the survivors of COVID.
56:34 [Mamta Murthi]: So without a doubt,
56:36 this is a big issue, and all of us at this point know somebody who has been touched by a road
56:44 accident or touched by COVID and it prompts us to think about what we can learn from one pandemic,
56:54 for the other issue of road safety. Let me focus, not on the
57:01 multiple aspects that everyone has spoken about eloquently. Let me focus on behavior change,
57:08 as a very important element, which we have learned about through COVID-19 and which is relevant for
57:16 road safety. We know from COVID-19, that there is a lot of vaccine hesitancy. This is true the world
57:25 over. Now, developing countries are at the moment not receiving enough vaccines, but we do know
57:33 from surveys that even if they were to receive vaccines, there is significant vaccine hesitancy.
57:38 [Mamta Murthi]:
57:39 A large number of people when asked if they will take a vaccine in a developing country,
57:44 say they won't, or they say they are unsure. In fact, there are more people who are unsure
57:51 than people who say no, but we also know that successful information campaigns,
57:58 information from people who are influential, they could be community leaders, they could be
58:05 religious leaders, they could be pop stars, they could be sportsmen.
58:09 We know that this has an impact on the receptivity of the population towards the message.
58:16 Here is one lesson that I think does carry over from the pandemic to road safety.
58:21 [Mamta Murthi]: Receiving information,
58:24 receiving the nudge that is required to make the change, that's required to make the change about
58:31 reducing speed, about wearing a helmet, about looking carefully when you cross a road and all
58:38 of this can have an impact on how people conduct themselves on a road. This can impact road safety.
58:49 Finally, let me be a bit contrarian and depart from the analogy of the pandemic.
58:59 COVID-19 is an infectious disease, it came upon us suddenly, it has spread rapidly, caused massive
59:06 death and desolation, but I would like to make an analogy with chronic disease. I think that's much
59:15 more relevant to road safety. Chronic disease is about how we behave on a day-to-day basis.
59:21 [Mamta Murthi]: Do we eat well? Do we exercise?
59:24 Do we cut back on smoking? Do we engage in fewer risky behaviors from a health standpoint?
59:35 This I feel is a more appropriate analogy to road safety, because just like in daily life,
59:41 we underestimate the risk of not getting exercise or we underestimate the risk of poor nutrition,
59:49 or we think, what will one additional cigarette do? Similarly,
59:55 we underestimate the risk of high speeds. What will one additional kilometer per hour
01:00:03 by way of speeding do? Yet we saw this excellent evidence presented earlier about the impact of
01:00:10 speeding or what will not wearing a helmet as I ride my motorcycle today
01:00:16 do? I think there is a lot that can be learned from the way chronic disease is managed.
01:00:24 [Mamta Murthi]: We know that giving people information,
01:00:28 nudging them towards better behavior, fiscal and other government policies such as
01:00:34 taxing cigarettes or taxing sugary drinks, other forms of community engagement can affect behavior.
01:00:47 This I feel is a very useful analogy that could be transferred over to road safety, helping people
01:00:54 engage in the right kinds of behaviors that make roads safer for pedestrians and for people who are
01:01:03 using other forms of transport. We actually did a very interesting report on this. It's
01:01:08 called The High Toll of Traffic Injuries, where we identified a number of best buys in road safety.
01:01:16 [Mamta Murthi]: These are interventions
01:01:19 that deliver a return very quickly in terms of reduced fatality and reduced injury.
01:01:27 They also cost very little. So my sense is that we want to learn from
01:01:34 the management of chronic disease, we want to learn from that and take forward some of
01:01:39 these investments that we have identified in our publication on the high toll of traffic injuries.
01:01:44 [Binyam Reja]: Okay, great. Thank you Mamta, I think this
01:01:50 is great. I think you've given us a really good food for thought, especially focusing on behavior
01:01:56 and nudging people to adapt better road safety behavior if you will, like better lifestyle. So
01:02:06 I think we would need to bring in a number of behavioral economists really
01:02:12 when we design road safety interventions and how we can nudge people towards a better lifestyles.
01:02:18 I thought that's a very nice way of articulating this issue. Okay, great. Thank you. Let's
01:02:24 now try to move ahead fast. We started late, so we do need to make up some time now.
01:02:30 [Binyam Reja]: So I'm going to bring back
01:02:33 again Hart Schafer to discussion. Then you mention briefly about cities and municipalities in your
01:02:41 first intervention. So I wanted to ask you that. So we are seeing cities being reset in terms of
01:02:47 traffic patterns because of the pandemic. Travel behavior is changing, land use is also changing.
01:02:53 People want to live in the suburb or people want to drive solo instead of public transport.
01:03:00 So how relevant is the speed management for cities in the context of building back better as
01:03:07 we recover from the pandemic crisis? So how should cities now function? What do you see here please?
01:03:15 [Hartwig Schafer]: Well, to the crisis, the pandemic crisis really
01:03:19 brought the focus on the future of transport of mobility and road safety in general. If we look
01:03:24 at the height of the pandemic crisis, the absolute numbers of road incidents was actually going down,
01:03:31 but that could have been because there's less traffic and less mobility because when you dig
01:03:36 deeper and look at the number of fatalities per kilometer traveled, it actually went up.
01:03:41 I think that reflects that streets are empty. Naturally, speeding is going to
01:03:46 increase and with increased speeding you have more severe accidents and incidents.
01:03:51 [Hartwig Schafer]: There is a larger proportion
01:03:53 of the population that is actually using roads as pedestrians, as cyclist and so on. So when
01:04:01 we look at how we come out of this pandemic and we build back better, clearly we need to take
01:04:07 those strengths into account. I think the public will be more cautious in using public transport,
01:04:14 using cars, and there will be a preference for walking and cycling. Naturally, that means
01:04:19 we need to rethink our transportation system, we need to rethink urban mobility as a system
01:04:25 itself. It needs to be less of a car-centric approach as Etienne was saying earlier.
01:04:31 [Hartwig Schafer]: It needs to put low speed streets in place,
01:04:34 streets that are safe for the different user groups. That requires that urban mobility
01:04:42 will have to provide dedicated lanes for pedestrians and cyclists that are safe
01:04:47 and ensure mobility across cities. We see some of those initiatives actually being launched already
01:04:55 in India. We have the Smart City Mission that was recently launched India. It's the title India
01:05:03 Cycles4Change Challenge, and it is supporting 11 cities where they are piloting
01:05:08 working and cycling alongside with motorized traffic. We as development partners can help
01:05:15 by making sure that part of our project finance is actually going into those investments that
01:05:22 are not just the tarmac that gets the road in, but traffic calming investments.
01:05:28 [Hartwig Schafer]: Making sure that there are safe
01:05:30 lanes for pedestrians and cyclists, that there are footpath, and we can also help with policy because
01:05:36 it requires a revision of the urban mobility policies. Lastly, we can help with building
01:05:42 capacity because that's a paradigm change. We need to make sure that those who are in charge of those
01:05:47 policies and investments, actually learn from best practice. As a global institution like the UN,
01:05:54 like the World Bank, we can bring global expertise, whether it is from Barcelona
01:05:59 or from other cities to countries like India or Bangladesh and I think this is something for us,
01:06:06 we are saying we are going to follow the GRID approach in the recovery from the pandemic.
01:06:12 [Hartwig Schafer]: For a Greener,
01:06:12 more Resilient, and more Inclusive Development. And road safety is absolutely integral to that.
01:06:18 [Binyam Reja]: Okay, great. Thank you Hart for that.
01:06:24 Okay. So let's move now to the third topic for our discussion. This is linking development agenda,
01:06:32 attaining synergies among different practices and sectors. I'm going to go back again to Mamta,
01:06:43 our Vice President for Human Development. So let me ask you Mamta, in your role as the Vice
01:06:47 President for Human Development at the World Bank, you oversee a range of agendas including
01:06:53 education, health, gender, social protection in jobs as well human capital project.
01:06:58 How do you see this development agenda items linking to road safety?
01:07:03 Including the safer speeds issue and what are the synergies we should be aiming for if we want to
01:07:08 achieve sustainable improvement in people's life, gender equality and economic growth? Please Mamta.
01:07:17 [Mamta Murthi]: Thank you Ben. So, let me begin by
01:07:21 saying that in human development, we believe in putting people at the center of development and
01:07:28 supporting programs that allow people to access public services so that they can invest
01:07:35 in themselves and have greater opportunities. I would see transport as a key enabler that allows
01:07:45 people to access services like health, like education. It allows people to access jobs.
01:07:52 It's both a key enabler, both transport and safe transport are both a key enabler
01:07:58 and a key equalizer, because this kind of access is essential if we
01:08:03 want to reduce disparities between people living in different geographical areas or
01:08:09 people of different genders or people of different abilities or ages or income levels.
01:08:15 [Mamta Murthi]: Having safe transport, safe,
01:08:20 affordable, accessible transport is essential to human opportunity and human development. Now,
01:08:26 I have an image in my mind about what this looks like, and let me just give two quick examples. If
01:08:34 I'm thinking about a rural area, I immediately think about roads, preferably all weather roads
01:08:40 that can get kids to school. There needs to be some shoulder or something next to
01:08:47 the road so that kids can walk safely. There needs to be some rules and regulations so that
01:08:53 the different forms of transport that are using the road do so in a way that kids remain safe.
01:09:00 [Mamta Murthi]: Very importantly, girls need to be able
01:09:03 to get to school and return from school safely. So that's what I would see as a safe and accessible
01:09:13 transport, supporting human development in a rural area. If I think of an urban area, the image in my
01:09:18 mind is slightly different. I'm thinking about a dense concentration of informal activity of shops,
01:09:27 of restaurants, of offices, of warehouses. People need to be able to reach these places of work,
01:09:34 pedestrians who are walking need to be safe,
01:09:39 different modes of transport need to be accommodated, public transport
01:09:43 should be available, the public transport should be driven or run by drivers who are safe.
01:09:52 [Mamta Murthi]: The train stops need to be safe,
01:09:54 well lit, women need to be able to go to and from work safely. That's the image
01:10:03 that I have in mind. So, while it may defer from a rural to an urban area, while it might defer
01:10:10 in terms of the kinds of economic activity that is supporting, in the end it's about
01:10:15 transport that is an enabler and an equalizer for people to access services and reach jobs.
01:10:21 [Binyam Reja]:
01:10:24 Okay. Wonderful, if I just ask you to continue briefly on the human development agenda,
01:10:31 is there any principles or lessons that you think are transferable
01:10:36 from what we see in the human development agenda to improving road safety outcomes? For instance,
01:10:42 is a transferable experience from various types of engagements from minister level to local
01:10:47 community engagement. Just maybe, perhaps you can say a little bit briefly on that.
01:10:54 [Mamta Murthi]: Let me say that I
01:10:56 believe there are two things that have been very successful in the Human Capital Project
01:11:01 in raising the importance of investing in people. Two lessons which I think are transferable to the
01:11:07 road safety agenda. The first lesson is the need to quantify the impact of investments on both
01:11:17 the quality of life of people, and on economic growth. We've been able to do this using the
01:11:23 human capital index, which was introduced in 2018. This really quantifies the impact of investments
01:11:30 in education or healthcare or safety nets on opportunities for people and on economic growth.
01:11:36 [Mamta Murthi]: I believe something similar. Just
01:11:39 like Hart was talking about earlier, as he did in the case of South Asia, I think quantifying
01:11:44 the impact of investments in road safety on other outcomes, whether it's jobs or inequality
01:11:51 or growth is very important to making the case for road safety investments. The second point
01:11:57 I would make is the multi-sector point, and I think Susanna made it and Hart and
01:12:02 Etienne and others made it. We know that human development depends on many things.
01:12:10 I just talked about how accessing schools through transport is extremely important.
01:12:15 So what we did in the Human Capital Project is that we proposed a whole of government approach.
01:12:22 [Mamta Murthi]: There's a focal
01:12:23 point in government, whether that's at the federal level or at the community level.
01:12:28 This focal point is able to pull together the different parts of government that are needed
01:12:35 to have an impact on a particular outcome of interest. In the case of the Human Capital
01:12:40 Project, these are human capital focal points, and they work with ministries of finance, education,
01:12:46 transport, et cetera to help devise a program that the World Bank and other agencies in partnership
01:12:54 can support in order to improve human development outcomes in country. So something like this I
01:13:01 think would be very helpful for road safety because of its cross sectoral nature.
01:13:07 [Mamta Murthi]: Hart earlier gave the
01:13:09 example of the state of Tamil Nadu, which has been very successful in India in bringing down
01:13:15 road fatalities quite sharply. One of the things that the government of Tamil Nadu did is
01:13:20 they had a cross sector task force to help with this activity. So these are the two
01:13:25 lessons that I think would transfer over from the Human Capital Project to road safety.
01:13:31 [Binyam Reja]: Okay. Wonderful. Thank you Mamta. Okay. So we
01:13:36 have five minutes left in our allotted time. So, I really will have to move fast one, maybe I'll skip
01:13:46 some questions and go on the [inaudible] in technology issue and I would like to ask,
01:13:53 bring back Jean Todt for this question. So Mr. Todt, you have previously spoken about Motorsport
01:14:02 as a development laboratory to advance on and make motoring safer. In regards to the speed issue,
01:14:11 what transferable lessons in technology are there to learn from and what other emerging mechanisms,
01:14:18 systems, technologies would you like to see in the vehicles we see on our streets, particularly
01:14:24 in low middle income countries or part of our broader system response to this issue? Please.
01:14:32 [Jean Todt]:
01:14:36 I believe that Motorsport is an example on effective view of the safe system
01:14:43 approach. We have been able to achieve this because Motorsport provides one of
01:14:49 the most heavily founded platform for automotive research. Its competitive environment results
01:14:57 in accelerated innovation and technological development towards road safety. For example, the
01:15:06 Motorsport world particularly Formula One shows that speed can be controlled and managed during
01:15:15 the opening lap of the last year Bahrain Grand Prix, you may remember the Romain Grosjean
01:15:22 crash when he lost control of his car traveling at 240 kilometers an
01:15:28 hour. When he hit the gas rail barrier at 190 kilometer an hour, snapping is car into two.
01:15:36 [Jean Todt]: We all have seen those survival
01:15:39 images. What have saved Romain Grosjean? Years of research by the FIA Safety Department, resulting
01:15:48 in the development of the latest protecting equipment like helmets, driver overalls,
01:15:56 forward head hand and neck restraints, fire resistant underwear, gloves, improve vehicle
01:16:04 design, like the hollow FIA crash test survival cells, cockpit padding, advent infrastructure
01:16:13 material for absorbing the energy of an impact and the complete absence of any other road users and
01:16:22 specific design circuits. In addition, the prompt response of the rescue team as well as the mental
01:16:29 and physical agility of a trained professional driver to take decisions in a fraction of second.
01:16:37 [Jean Todt]: All these elements combined,
01:16:40 making up a safe system protects your road users, won't make a mistake. Even after the
01:16:47 crash that occurred in Motorsport including the cases with no severe consequences for the driver,
01:16:54 investigations take place. It helps us learn more and reduce potential risk for
01:17:00 similar situation in the future. So, what we saw in Bahrain will not happen again.
01:17:09 When we see the investigation of Romain Grosjean getting into data and getting also into
01:17:20 accident data recorder, we can see the speed and the forces on the car and in here accelerometer
01:17:28 that are fitted inside the driver's ear here to measure the movement of his head in a crash.
01:17:34 [Jean Todt]: It is what we call a
01:17:36 safe system approach. It is a culture of safety embedded into competition,
01:17:42 and I believe this is the most important lesson Motorsport can bring to everyday mobility
01:17:50 as a laboratory. Most of the cars in operation in many parts of the world, do not meet minimum
01:17:58 recommended UN standard that we all well know. If the same volume of production that had occurred
01:18:05 since 2010 is repeated in the next decade, about another 900 million new auto automobiles will be
01:18:13 added to the global fleet by 2030. The majority will be produced and sold in middle income
01:18:21 countries. We need this cars to be fitted with the UN's list of recommended safety standards,
01:18:28 including front and side impact, predestrian protection and electronic stability control.
01:18:34 [Jean Todt]: In the new decade,
01:18:37 what we need the most is a culture of safety.
01:18:40 [Binyam Reja]: Okay. Wow. Wonderful. Thank you
01:18:48 on that. Well, the time is really over. There is one or two minutes, I'd like to maybe ask Susanna
01:18:57 to briefly talk about the technology aspects for safety especially the
01:19:05 technology and the artificial intelligence trend and how you see the big data aspects in improving
01:19:15 road safety. Also maybe to
01:19:20 Etienne Krug from WHO if you can also tell us a little bit the knowledge that we have and the
01:19:27 tools that we have in moving this agenda forward. In particular, are we ready? Are we fully equipped
01:19:35 to bring it all together? So both of you, and then we'll conclude for keeping you a couple
01:19:42 more minutes later than we are scheduled. We started late actually, Susanna first.
01:19:47 [Susanna Zammataro]: Thank you very much Ben,
01:19:50 and maybe in the interest of time, allow me to divert from your question. Actually,
01:19:55 I'm going to answer to your question in one sentence, just by saying that indeed, big data,
01:20:03 artificial intelligence and technology in general will be the greatest allies we have going forward,
01:20:08 and we should stop thinking about technology and artificial intelligence and big data as
01:20:14 being at the same time something that seems very far away from low and middle income
01:20:19 countries. Reality is actually the bank has been doing fantastic work
01:20:22 on how using those tools to harvest those type of data that we need to make informed decision.
01:20:29 [Susanna Zammataro]: Very quickly I want to come back and
01:20:32 that's why I'm dissenting from your question. Come back to the issue of the private sector.
01:20:36 We as IRF have been working very hard with the private sector, trying to illustrate really the
01:20:47 areas of opportunities where companies can make meaningful contribution to road safety outcomes
01:20:53 and also inspire action within the sector. We're doing that even more proactively than that. We're
01:21:00 working on building private sector coalitions in different countries around the world,
01:21:05 and there will be an announcement going on Friday I believe. We need to learn to better harness the
01:21:12 power of corporate resources and the presence in the communities as it was said by others.
01:21:18 [Susanna Zammataro]: One final quick point,
01:21:21 imagine for a moment, the level of impact and the transformational change we could have if we were
01:21:26 able to scale up in the sector, those good examples which exist and are set
01:21:32 by some leading companies today, throughout their supply chain and largely in the sector
01:21:38 via for example an industry code of conduct, which would be backed up at the same time by the robust
01:21:44 knowledge and expertise sharing. If you couple that with policy and regulatory interventions,
01:21:49 you actually have a winning recipe, that's exactly where those partnerships in between the public
01:21:56 and the private sector are so important. We can also start from local communities.
01:22:01 [Susanna Zammataro]: In fact, as Hart was mentioning
01:22:03 and then build it up through the national level. Thank you.
01:22:06 [Binyam Reja]:
01:22:08 Great. That's wonderful. You actually also addressed one of the key questions we were
01:22:12 asked from the participants. Okay. Etienne if you could sum it up for us in terms of whether
01:22:21 we have the knowledge and tools to move forward on this and or what we need more.
01:22:37 Etienne? Okay. I don't know whether he is still with us, maybe
01:22:44 Hart then I can give you the floor to sum it up for us. Also, maybe if you see the technologies
01:22:51 and what [inaudible] heard, just that you think from the World Bank perspective.
01:22:56 [Hartwig Schafer]: No, I think this has been
01:22:59 a very rich discussion. I really want to thank all the panelists. So for me when I look at low speed
01:23:05 streets, it has at least a triple width, it's healthier and safer, that's important because
01:23:10 it keeps us safe, clearly. The second, it's greener, it helps us to actually
01:23:16 get better air quality in urban centers where we need it most and, it is better for social,
01:23:21 cultural and economic development. If you're sitting in the car, you're going through,
01:23:25 if you are walking as a pedestrian or a cyclist, you may go to the shop [inaudible] on. So
01:23:30 it helps businesses, it revitalizes inner cities and I think this is the way to go.
01:23:36 [Hartwig Schafer]: We see that in the developed
01:23:37 world happening. When we look at Barcelona as an example, I mentioned that earlier,
01:23:42 I think we can do it in the developing world. So I look to continuing
01:23:46 on addressing road safety in a very strong partnership with the UN, with the FIA Foundation,
01:23:52 Bloomberg Philanthropy, IRF and so on. Thank you very much for this interesting discussion.
01:23:57 [Binyam Reja]:
01:23:59 Great. Thank you Hart. Well, this has been indeed a very rich discussion, very insightful,
01:24:06 very collaborative. We've had quite a lot of activities and questions from the audience.
01:24:12 Our team has been also responding to them. I think many of you have already covered a lot of them.
01:24:18 Let me just thank again the panelists, Etienne Krug, John Todt, Mamta Murthi, Susanna Zammataro,
01:24:25 Hart Schafer. Thank you all and ... thank you also for Alina and Radek, and for Pablo for
01:24:33 opening this important seminar webinar. I would also like to invite you all to come for the next
01:24:41 session that we have upcoming on the speed management guide book that's going to be launched.
01:24:48 [Binyam Reja]: Okay. So this will bring it to close
01:24:52 our session, and I wish you all a good day.
01:24:56 Good, safe, good day and we will continue the discussion. We will reconnect in the future. Ciao.
01:25:03 [Susanna Zammataro]: Thank you. Bye-bye.
01:25:06 [Binyam Reja]: Thank you. Thank you.
01:25:08 [Mamta Murthi]: Thanks everyone. Bye-bye.

Streets for Life: Saving Lives on the Road through Safe Speeds

Follow the event on Twitter #StreetsforLife

Speed is one of the main risk factors in road crashes and is often cited as being the leading contributor to death and serious injury on the world’s roads. This is because higher speed is associated with a significantly higher crash risk – even small increases in speed can have a big consequence, and the probability of injury and the severity of a crash increases rapidly with higher impact speeds.

In a bid to help address the collective impact of speed as a contributor to crash risks, the World Bank’s Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) will celebrate the 6th UN Global Road Safety Week by hosting the High-level Panel “Streets for life: Saving lives on the road through safe speeds.” In this year’s theme “Streets for life: #Love30”, this event will be focused on communications strategies for speed management initiatives in low-and middle-income countries, promoting key knowledge products and a new Speed Management Hub that advocates and calls for action on low-speed streets worldwide, limiting speeds to 30 km/h (20 mph) where people walk, live and play.

For GRSF, this activity will mark an important milestone in the roadmap towards establishing the Second Decade of Action in Road Safety 2030. This interactive event will provide information and technical sessions on evidence-based road safety knowledge to help manage speeds through infrastructure interventions, effective enforcement, targeted awareness measures, and vehicle technology.

Opening Remarks

Pablo Fajnzylber

Acting Vice President and Director of Strategy and Operations, Infrastructure, World Bank

Technical Presentation

Radoslaw Czapski

Senior Transport Specialist & Program Manager, World Bank GRSF
Alina Burlacu

Senior Transport Specialist and Program Manager, World Bank GRSF
@AlinaBurlacu2

High-Level Panel

Hartwig Schafer

Vice President, South Asia Region, World Bank Group
@HartwigSchafer
Etienne Krug

Director, Department of the Social Determinants of Health, WHO
@etiennekrug
Jean Todt

President, Fédération Internationale de L’Autombile & UN Special Envoy for Road Safety
@JeanTodt
Mamta Murthi

Vice President for Human Development, World Bank
@MamtaMurthi
Susanna Zammataro

Director General, International Road Federation
@ZammataroS

Moderator

Binyam Reja

Acting Global Director, Transport Global Practice, World Bank
@RejaBinyam

Read the transcript

00:11 [Binyam Reja]: Okay. Great. Good morning,
00:14 everyone. Good evening. good afternoon. First of all, I would like to apologize for the delay
00:20 for starting this webinar. We just had quite a number of technical problems,
00:25 but now we're all set to get started. Welcome to this high-level panel organized by the World Bank,
00:33 Global Road Safety. We're organizing this webinar in the context of the six UN Road Safety Week,
00:41 an important week. The title of this high-level panel is Streets for Life: Saving Lives on the
00:48 Road through Safe Speeds. Under the UN Global Road Safety Week, actually GRSF has already been
00:56 actively promoting this and already delivered the speed management webinar on April 26th.
01:04 [Binyam Reja]: Today we'll have
01:05 this high-level panel and tomorrow we'll have the launch of the Low-Speed Zone Guide event.
01:13 This interactive event will provide information and technical sessions on evidence-based road
01:18 safety knowledge to help manage speeds through infrastructure interventions,
01:22 effective enforcement, world informed leadership, targeted awareness measures
01:27 and vehicle technology. This is a high time to raise our collective voice against speeding
01:32 and showing global leadership and commitment. These activities will mark an important
01:37 milestone in the roadmap toward establishing the second decade of road action in road safety.
01:42 [Binyam Reja]: That's 2021 to 2030. As you're all aware,
01:47 there are very high costs for traffic injuries. Each year, we lose about 1.3 million people and
01:54 around 50 million injured, mostly in low and middle-income countries. Speed
02:00 is a key contributor to road crashes, taking over 650,000 lives annually. Hence the six UN
02:07 Global Road Safety Week, rightly focuses on this issue and brings a global spotlight for several
02:13 roads. We're very pleased to be at the forefront of this initiatives. We're very happy to be
02:18 partnering with a number of global organizations and GRSF is taking leadership at this front.
02:24 [Binyam Reja]: Today, we have very amazing
02:27 and distinguished speakers and panelists who are playing a critical role across the
02:33 world to make progress in road safety agenda. Let me introduce this distinguished panelists
02:40 in the order they come in this program. First, I'm delighted to introduce Pablo Fajnzylber
02:46 our acting Vice President and Director of Strategy for Infrastructure. Pablo will give the
02:53 opening remarks. Thank you Pablo first of all for being part of the series of events we've having
02:59 under the UN Global Road Safety Week and really appreciate your leadership and
03:04 support for road safety at the Bank. We will be taking questions from World Bank colleagues
03:11 on the GRSF role in speed management initiatives, including [inaudible] ... this presentation
03:18 is going to be presented by Radek Czapski and Alina Burlaçu. Burlacu. Sorry, Alina.
03:29 [Binyam Reja]: Radek is Senior Transport Specialist
03:30 and Program Manager for GRSF, and Alina is also Senior Transport Specialist and Program Manager
03:37 for the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS). After this
03:43 short presentation, we'll move to the high-level panel discussion. We're delighted to have Mr.
03:49 Etienne Krug from the World Health Organization. He's the Director for the Department of the
03:55 Social Determinants of Health. Then we are honored also to have Mr. Jean Todt, the UN Special Envoy
04:02 for Road Safety and FIA President. He has been at the forefront of this initiative in many forums.
04:08 [Binyam Reja]: Many of you sure you're aware of the
04:11 great work Mr. Todt has been doing on this aspect. We're also delighted to have Ms. Mamta Murthi
04:18 our Vice President for Human Development at the World Bank emphasizing as she will speak later
04:26 about the importance of human development and the linkages between road safety and human capital
04:31 and human development in general. We also have Susanna Zammataro, she's the Director
04:37 General for International Road Federation, an important stakeholder that's promoting
04:43 safe roads and promoting private partnership in this regard. We would hear from Susanna as well.
04:48 [Binyam Reja]: Last but not least is Mr. Hartwig Schafer
04:53 our Vice President for the South Asia Region at the World Bank. who has been promoting road
05:00 safety in South Asia region and globally. We're very delighted to have you Hart in this program.
05:05 I thank you all of the panel to join me in thanking the panelists for joining
05:10 us today. I'm sure the audience will get some insightful guidance on how to make [inaudible]
05:16 and how to save lives on the road. Now, I would like to request Pablo to make his opening remarks,
05:22 which will be followed by the presentation of Radek and Alina. Pablo, over to you please.
05:26 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: Thank you Ben. Thank you so much to you.
05:33 Thank you to our distinguished guests. We're very lucky to have two World Bank
05:38 vice presidents of these event, as well as distinguished representatives from the UN,
05:43 the International Road Federation, the World Health Organization. We're really lucky to have
05:49 all of you today, and we hope that this will be a very fruitful debate that will be very
05:55 informative to all the participants. I am also delighted to do this in the context of this year,
06:02 UN Global Road Safety Week, which as we know is themed, Streets for Life: #Love30.
06:09 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: Under this year's Global Road Safety Week,
06:14 the World Bank Road Safety Facility is promoting a series of knowledge products that aim to advocate
06:22 and call for action on speed management in our streets worldwide. These initiatives will mark
06:30 an important milestone towards establishing the second Decade of Action in road safety. 2021,
06:37 2030. Interactive events such as the one we're holding here today, aim at sharing
06:44 and exchanging evidence-based knowledge on what is proven to work in road safety interventions.
06:51 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: Specifically, our focus today is
06:55 on interventions that help manage speeds through infrastructure investments, effective enforcement,
07:03 well informed leadership, targeted awareness measures, and new vehicle technology.
07:10 To focus on speed management is related first to the fact that this year, the UN Global Road
07:18 Safety Week, advocates for the implementation of speed management strategies. This is especially
07:24 important in places where we have vulnerable road users present and where there is clear evidence
07:31 that a speed of 30 kilometers per hour is required to produce safe outcomes for these road users.
07:39 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: As we will hear today, vehicle speeds
07:42 play a significant role in road safety outcomes, leading to increased deaths and serious injuries
07:50 every year. Speed ... This is very important, also plays an important role in other societal
07:57 developments, such as local air pollution, global greenhouse gas emissions, noise pollution and
08:06 active travel promotion. All these issues have important links to broader health and development
08:13 outcomes. It is thus essential to highlight these linkages between speed, safety, air pollution
08:22 and human capital development. This is because recognizing these interconnections, can lead
08:29 to increased awareness of the synergies at hand and can help bring about greater policy action.
08:36 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: And also ultimately increase benefits
08:39 for the population if these issues are considered together. As we will discuss in a few minutes,
08:46 there are cost effective solutions that we can use to better manage speeds to both improve
08:53 road user's safety and to also achieve these broader societal outcomes. The World Bank has
09:00 been implementing many of these solutions as part of our projects. As we move into this new Decade
09:07 of Action, we hope that this event helps bring global focus to the need for practical approaches
09:16 to engage governments and the private sector to first invest in road safety, but at the same time,
09:24 harness data to inform implementation and calibration of our interventions.
09:29 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: Finally, to ensure that synergies
09:32 with other development agendas, especially the one related to the human development issues,
09:39 are well taken into account. As you know, road safety has been an important priority
09:45 for the World Bank. We have aimed at playing a global leadership role in this space through
09:52 the activities of the Global Road Safety Facility that is now more than 15 years old. As an example
09:59 of our latest work in this area, we recently launched a new Speed Management Hub website
10:07 that contains information and resources on these topic. Our Global Road Safety Facility is also
10:14 leading international efforts to produce a new global guide on the effective management of speed.
10:20 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: This guide will complement other global resources
10:26 by providing up-to-date information on the following, first, the importance of effective
10:32 speed management in terms of safety, but also as we mentioned, broader societal benefits.
10:38 Second, on ways to set effective speed limits for different road environments. finally,
10:45 on methods to support these speed limits through the improvement of infrastructure,
10:50 but also the design enforcement of policies of various natures.
10:56 Let me to take this opportunity to invite everyone to our event tomorrow mentioned by Ben earlier.
11:02 This event tomorrow May 20, will be about empowering communities to manage speed.
11:09 At this event, we will officially launch another product, the Low-Speed Zone Guide.
11:16 [Pablo Fajnzylber]: Which has been produced jointly between the
11:18 World Bank, GRSF and WRI. This guide will aim at helping communities and decision makers to plan,
11:28 design and implement effective speed-related interventions specifically in built up areas.
11:36 This Low-Speed Zone Guide will complement the Global Speed Management Guide,
11:42 which we plan to launch later this year, but which we will make available tomorrow
11:48 at the webinar for a preview. Thank you once again to our guests and to all the participants
11:56 in today's event. I really look forward to hearing today's presentation
12:01 and having a very productive panel discussion. Thank you very much and back to you Ben.
12:09 [Binyam Reja]:
12:19 Okay, great. Thank you Pablo for these great opening
12:28 remarks and setting the context for discussion today. So now we will just
12:32 move straight to the presentation by Radek and Alina. Over to you guys. Thank you.
12:52 [Alina Burlacu]: [silence] Radek, We cannot hear you.
13:19 [Alina Burlacu]: So it seems that
13:21 my colleague Radek... Radek, can you hear us now?
13:32 I think he might have some connection problems. So I'll start with the
13:38 presentation and finally ask Radek to step in whenever he has a good connection.
13:47 So good morning, afternoon or evening to all distinguished guests and participants connecting
13:52 from all around the world. My name is Alina Burlacu and together with my colleague Radek
13:56 Czapski we were supposed together to deliver the presentation and address it briefly today.
14:02 [Alina Burlacu]: As most of you know,
14:04 speeding is estimated to be a direct cause or major contributor to around 50% of global road
14:10 death, which translates into 650,000 lives annually. that is why the World
14:16 Bank and the Global Road Safety Facility are particularly committed to tackle this challenge.
14:22 This event organizing the context of the speed management focus of the UN
14:27 Global Road Safety Week is part of our global quest for safe speeds, but before we provide
14:33 some more details on our speed focused actions, let me briefly introduce you our engagement.
14:40 So first and foremost, we are a global road safety fund hosted by the World Bank since 2006.
14:46 [Alina Burlacu]: Thanks to generosity of our donors,
14:48 we are all recognized at the bottom of the slide we managed to attract almost 74 million United
14:55 States dollars (USD) for a very diverse set of research advisory and capacity building projects.
15:03 But at the same time we are a global knowledge and expertise center, which provided support to over
15:08 80 developing countries. We are very grateful to all our donors for their ongoing support,
15:13 and obviously hope to continue and expand our collaboration to achieve ambitious goals
15:18 of the current UN Decade of Action in road safety. Thanks to chairs and funded direct
15:24 support to the developing countries and guidance to the World Bank fund and investment projects.
15:28 [Alina Burlacu]: Thousands of us have been and will be saved in the
15:31 next decades, but there is still a long way to go in cooperation with our global regional partners,
15:38 such as WHO, MDBs, UN partners, NGOs, research institutions and academia. We are also glad
15:46 that more than half of GRSF funding have gone to initiatives implemented by this partner.
15:54 Our attention is focused on low and middle income countries and our main types of engagements
15:59 range from promoting strong regional and country level road safety leadership and influencing
16:04 decision makers through advising and promoting proven result-focused
16:09 safety interventions among developing country professionals to funding external
16:14 partners in the research and knowledge exchange activities in low and middle income countries.
16:18 [Alina Burlacu]: In parallel, GRSF provides
16:21 regular support to World Bank teams, in assuring safe solutions to World Bank loan funded projects,
16:28 and thanks to our donors along with our support to the Bloomberg Philanthropies
16:32 Initiative for Global Road Safety and our multi-donor trust fund grant program, we are
16:37 advancing our long research activities, which focus on the most efficient ways of addressing
16:42 key road safety challenges of developing countries, including in speed management.
16:48 In recognition of our efficient delivery of diverse road safety activities, the GRSF has won
16:53 three prestigious Prince Michael awards in 2020, which is a very nice and re-energizing surprise.
17:03 [Alina Burlacu]: Before I go into more details on the
17:05 Speed Management Hub, I would just like to briefly underline that speed management was and is among
17:12 top priority areas for GRSF activity. Let me just briefly mention a few of the most recent examples.
17:21 Our research on infrastructure related speed management measure is the priority theme of this
17:29 year GRSF Call for proposal, which is advancing now and successful brands to be confirmed in June.
17:35 Also, speed is among the driving factors influencing economic analysis of World Bank
17:41 projects. Two of the GRSF recent practical guides share international good practices regarding
17:48 effective speed management measures, is one of them being the guide for road safety intervention,
17:53 evidence of what works and what doesn't work.
17:55 [Alina Burlacu]: And also the guide
17:56 for determining readiness for speed cameras and other automated speed enforcement systems
18:02 prepared jointly with our partners, the Global Road Safety Partnership or GRSP.
18:09 Another GRSF managed program is the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety,
18:14 or also called BIGRS which spreads over a six years period and aims saving 600,000
18:21 lives and prevent up to 22 million injuries.
18:25 World Bank GRSF is one of the safer ways and safer mobility partners, and also the host of
18:30 the Speed Management Hub of the initiative, which was officially launched a couple of months ago.
18:34 [Alina Burlacu]: Some key engagements that GRSF has under the Speed
18:38 Management Hub, include provision of speed-related technical expertise and also preparation and
18:44 publication of various speed-related studies, success stories and guides together with knowledge
18:49 sharing and dissemination. One of the main outputs of the Speed Management Hub is a dedicated online
18:55 platform, aiming to be a one stop shop in terms of speed-related knowledge. This platform provides
19:01 evidence-based road safety knowledge to help manage speed through infrastructure intervention,
19:06 effective enforcement, targeted awareness measure and also vehicle technology.
19:11 [Alina Burlacu]: The platform also allows the wide dissemination
19:14 of speed related frequently asked questions and myth together with a rich library, latest news and
19:20 best practices on this topic. Then also we have several myths busted on our hub platform. I'd like
19:28 here to mention the number one myth related to speed, which is that speed isn't actually a major
19:35 cause of road crashes or that changing my speed won't have any impact on safety. The reason why
19:42 this is a myth is very simple as the relationship between speed and crash outcome has been captured
19:48 in various models, most notably Nilsson's Power Model that you can see on the screen.
19:53 [Alina Burlacu]: This shows that 1% increase
19:56 in average speed results in approximately 4% increase in fatal crash frequency. Basically,
20:03 this model shows how decreasing average speed by only a few kilometer per hour can significantly
20:08 reduce the risk and severity of crashes. Maybe this doesn't seem like much, but in practice,
20:15 if we reduce the speed by 2%, meaning for example in urban areas from 50 to 49 kilometer per hour,
20:22 and similar changes on other roads globally, we would be saving over 100,000 lives from road
20:28 crashes each and every year. Imagine the impact if we would go for a 10%
20:34 reduction, we would be preventing over half a million lives lost in road crushes.
20:39 [Alina Burlacu]: Even more than this,
20:41 adopting 30 kilometer per hour speed limit in cities, will make Vision Zero reality and
20:47 have no more lives lost in road crashes as Oslo, Norway's capital achieved in 2019. But for this
20:55 political commitment and continuation of programs across political parties
20:59 are crucial, together with community support. one good example in this regard is Bogota. Bogota is
21:06 a success story that exemplifies the power of reducing speed limits. In 2017, the World Bank,
21:12 GRSF, iRAP and local partners assessed almost 200 kilometers of roads across the city and used
21:19 the data to perform a series of scenario tests to see what the impact of changing speeds would be.
21:24 [Alina Burlacu]: This helped build the
21:26 evidence to support a move to reduce and strictly enforce speed limits. Later in 2018, the city was
21:33 convinced to reduce and actively enforce speed limits from 60 to 50 kilometer per hour on
21:38 five major corridors, which together accounted for a quarter of the city's total road death.
21:44 The effect was dramatic. According to the early reporting, month-on-month death dropped by 34%.
21:52 The success in this corridor encouraged the city to later roll out a 50 kilometer per hour speed
21:57 limit in all arterial roads in the city. So this was a really good place to start from
22:03 and build on the case that lower speeds save lives.
22:06 [Alina Burlacu]: I should also add here that the city
22:08 has done a lot of other good work, including on bicycle lanes and pedestrian crossings at schools.
22:14 Bloomberg Philanthropies through their initiative, supported the transition between administration
22:19 and political parties, making sure these lower speed limits not only stay in place,
22:24 but are also adopted on other streets. The GRSF has more upcoming resources to support enhanced
22:32 speed management. We have a Low-Speed Zone Guide and the Global Speed Management Guide
22:36 that Pablo was just mentioning both prepared together with the World Resources Institute,
22:41 and we hope you can join the interactive event tomorrow and learn more about them.
22:44 [Alina Burlacu]: We are also working on a road safety calculator,
22:48 which is a planning level tool to inform decision makers on road safety improvements and
22:52 investments, including five interventions of speed, which you can see on your screen.
22:57 Last but not least, a research analysis on the economics and benefits of speed management
23:02 is ongoing, aiming to improve our understanding of the wider socioeconomic gains that can be obtained
23:09 in the context of low and middle income countries through sound speed management. So I will end
23:14 my presentation here and I will invite you to check our website and reach out to us for any
23:19 questions you might have related to speed or road safety in general. Thank you. Ben, over to you.
23:30 [Binyam Reja]: Okay, great. Thank you Alina for the presentation
23:33 and laying out what the work being done in GRSF and Bloomberg Philanthropies. It's also great that
23:39 you have evidence [inaudible] reducing speed and moving to 30 kilometers per hour speed zone.
23:46 I also like what you said about the need for political commitment and community
23:51 participation. So, well with us today, we have important policy makers and leaders in their
23:58 sphere. So, let's have this discussion how we can actually galvanize community awareness, ownership
24:07 and political commitment for really reducing speed on our roads and thereby saving lives.
24:14 [Binyam Reja]: Let me now welcome our distinguished
24:16 panelists to our virtual table. As a reminder, we have Mr. Etienne Krug from WHO, Jean Todt
24:25 from the UN Special Envoy for road safety, Mamta Murthi, our Vice President for Human Development,
24:33 Susanna Zammataro, IRF Director General and Hart Schafer, Vice President for South Asia
24:41 Region in the World Bank. So we'll have a series of questions as I'm going to give
24:47 a few questions and I'll let the panelists answer. So the topics we'll discuss today are
24:53 around the Decade of Action for road safety, on rebuilding momentum in the new COVID world
25:00 and linking development agenda and attending synergies, especially with human development.
25:06 [Binyam Reja]: If we have time,
25:07 we will also discuss about new technology and knowledge for moving forward. So let's start
25:13 then on this question on the Decade of Action for road safety. So let me start with Mr. Krug,
25:20 who has been leading efforts on the preparation of the new Decade of Action for road safety.
25:26 So Mr. Krug, we have just finished the first Decade of Action for road safety and we are
25:32 now entering a new Decade of Action. Can you tell us a little bit on what this have been,
25:38 the key challenge for the first Decade of Action and for the main lessons that we have learned
25:45 from this Decade of Action that could be applied for the new Decade of Action? Mr. Krug.
25:51 [Etienne Krug]: Thanks so much. First of all, happy
25:54 UN Global Road Safety Week to all of you and thanks to our colleagues in the World Bank for
26:00 organizing this important discussion on road safety in general, on speed in particular,
26:06 and on this #Love30 concepts of reducing speed in urban areas. Yes, indeed we just finished
26:15 the first Decade of Action and we've seen quite big differences in what has been achieved
26:24 in some countries versus others. We've seen important decreases in road traffic deaths in
26:30 Russia, in Brazil, in the European union ranging from 20% all the way to 50%.
26:36 [Etienne Krug]: So that's a lot of success
26:41 in just 10 years showing that it's possible. The key to these achievements really has been
26:49 political will. A decision at the highest level of government at the national or even
26:54 international level in the EU to really address this issue and have substantial reductions.
27:01 And that of course they put in place the things that we know are needed,
27:05 good laws, an enforcement, including on speed, good infrastructure, vehicles, trauma care, solid
27:13 data collection, et cetera. But this issue of political will at the highest level has been key.
27:19 [Etienne Krug]: We've seen in other countries that this
27:22 politic will wasn't there, and in most low income countries and low and middle income countries,
27:28 we have still seen an increase in the number of deaths showing that
27:33 more efforts are needed. So at the beginning of this decade, we are quite convinced that we can
27:38 achieve the proposed reduction of 50% of deaths around the world, if we put in place those things
27:46 that we know work. If we add to that some innovation, which includes a modal shift,
27:52 moving away from a car-based transportation system to one that is more healthy, walking, cycling and
28:01 public transport should get a much bigger space in our transportation system. But to do that we need
28:08 every head of state, every head of government to take the decision that enough is enough.
28:13 [Etienne Krug]: That we don't
28:14 want to continue to pay this huge price for our mobility. Thank you.
28:19 [Binyam Reja]:
28:24 Great. Thank you Mr. Krug for that [inaudible] the political commitment. When we move... I just want
28:34 to follow up with you then, when we move to the new Decade of Action, do you see the inclusion
28:42 of speed management to be included there given [inaudible] how can we ensure that this is the
28:50 core part of new Decade of Action? In particular, I really like how moving to public transport to
28:58 active transport and avoiding [inaudible] being important, because that also is actually a way
29:05 to decarbonize the transport system and reducing greenhouse gas emission. So whatever we do in road
29:10 safety, actually has carried a lot of synergies with other sectors, which we can discuss later.
29:15 [Binyam Reja]: But just on the speed management, well how you
29:18 would see it being included and how can we ensure it to be included on the second Decade of Action?
29:23 [Etienne Krug]: Indeed, if we reduce speed
29:26 and if we move to more active and healthy modes of transport, we will reduce emissions,
29:33 we will reduce noise, we will have more opportunities to move, which is much healthier
29:40 in terms of prevention of cancer, cardiovascular disease. So yes, there's a lot of additional
29:45 benefits. To do that we need to tackle speed. So speed is a central element of the new plan
29:51 that has been developed for the Decade of Action, which by the way, is on the web right now for the
29:57 whole month of May for an open consultation process for all member states, UN agencies,
30:04 civil society organizations to comment on. But speed is already included and it's central.
30:09 [Etienne Krug]: Addressing speed, it's probably
30:11 very important to mention that addressing speed of course requires good road safety legislation
30:17 and enforcement and information to the public, but it's not only about that, it is also about
30:22 modifying infrastructure, making sure that the infrastructure is built, and that's very important
30:28 of course for the World Bank to keep in mind. I'm sure Susana will talk about that too, but
30:34 make sure that infrastructure is built, so that speeding is simply not possible. We know how to
30:41 build a road these days so that you can't speed anymore. We also know how to make sure that there
30:46 are sidewalks, bicycle lanes elevated, separated so that people can walk and cycle safely.
30:52 [Etienne Krug]: It's also about
30:53 vehicles and make sure that vehicles cannot speed too much. The technology is there now,
30:59 so that we call also on vehicle manufacturing to play their role. So all in all, yes it is
31:06 definitely part of the new Decade of Action and more than it's a central element of the new plan.
31:11 [Binyam Reja]: Okay, great. That's really great to hear
31:16 that we have it front and center in the second Decade of Action. Okay. Now let's move to our
31:26 second panelist. Mr. Todt, welcome Mr. Todt, I think you've been a really great leader
31:34 on road safety globally. It's really good and delightful to have you here. I wanted to
31:41 ask you, actually, what the expectations are, looking at implementing and achieving
31:46 the goal of the second Decade of Action. You heard Mr. Krug laying out what that includes,
31:52 it would be great to hear from you what your expectations are and what do you consider are
31:58 the main principles in which decision makers and key stakeholders should be focusing their time,
32:04 energy and limited resource in achieving the Decade of Action. Over to you. Mr. Todt.
32:13 [Jean Todt]: Thank you very much and happy
32:18 to be sharing this important World Bank meeting with my colleague during this UN Road Safety Week.
32:30 I thank the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility for bringing us all together. Road safety needs a
32:39 concerted default from all stakeholder around the world. While we made gains into the first Decade
32:46 of Action and Etienne reminded a while ago, my expectation is to have even greater gains
32:53 in the second decade by addressing disparity and gaps. In what areas could we do better?
33:01 We know that 90% of our fatality than injuries occur in low and middle income countries.
33:08 [Jean Todt]: Therefore with our limited resources and time,
33:12 we must focus on providing support to those most affected communities. This will be essential to
33:21 drive us to reach our goals in the second decade. Financing platform like the UN Road Safety Fund
33:29 and Global Road Safety Facility are key mechanisms to provide this type of support. We know that we
33:37 do not place enough value on all elements of our road transport system. We need to do a better
33:43 job of engaging and holding the private sector accountable, including vehicle manufacturers,
33:50 investors in transport and infrastructures, ride share providers, beverage companies and so on.
33:56 [Jean Todt]: All actors have a
33:59 responsibility in building the safety system that protects every road users, especially
34:06 the most vulnerable. We know that road safety benefits many sustainable development goals,
34:12 and can be transformative for the environment, healthcare sectors, sustainable cities,
34:18 human rights amongst others. We must do a better job of showcasing these linkages.
34:24 This will drive more investments and priority among the government. We also know that achieving
34:31 the LDG target 3.6 to half road death and injuries can only be reached by achieving LDG. 11.2
34:40 which is to provide access to safe, sustainable and affordable transport to all by 2030.
34:48 [Jean Todt]: For this, I must raise the importance of
34:51 increasing access to safe public transit, which also delivers on our climate goals.
35:01 [Binyam Reja]: Okay, great. Thank you,
35:04 Mr. Todt for the very sharp way you really articulated the linkages between improving speed,
35:13 road safety and the wider development goals for environment, for sustainable cities,
35:19 human capital. That is good in that respect. So thank you. So
35:25 now let's move to Mrs. Susanna Zammataro from IRF. You're a very important step,
35:34 Mrs. Zammataro for the [inaudible]. So I wanted to really understand from your point of view, what do
35:40 you see as some of the key challenge or missed opportunities from the first Decade of Action,
35:45 especially this has been an issue we're discussing today, and what are some of the lessons from this?
35:50 [Binyam Reja]: What did we really
35:51 miss in the first Decade of Action that we could have done better in making sure
35:57 our roads have the appropriate speed and are safe.
36:01 [Susanna Zammataro]:
36:05 Thank you very much. I hope you can all hear me well. Yes? Thank you for having me this
36:12 afternoon and thanks to the GRSF for organizing this panel and giving me the opportunity as
36:17 well to share the floor with the stage with such passionate leaders, when it comes to road safety.
36:25 I would like to start answering your question most probably by underlining first of all the
36:31 tremendous achievements made during the first Decade of Action in terms of building the body
36:36 of knowledge around road safety and around the key risk factors such as speed. We have today
36:43 robust research findings, providing a strong evidence and recommendation for
36:49 a system of say speed limits for the different type of road environments.
36:54 [Susanna Zammataro]: I hope we'll have a chance to later on
36:56 the conversation to back to this. Although all the benefits are scientifically proved, no low income
37:04 countries today and only 3% of middle income countries have 30 kilometers per hour or less
37:11 speed limit for urban roads. Of course that tells us that there's so much work that we still need to
37:17 do. Campaigns like the one we are currently experimenting this week, the ongoing Streets for
37:25 Life and the #Love30 campaign help tremendously I have to say in changing that narrative around
37:33 speed, which often is a very political debate to the extent it becomes a really just debate almost.
37:40 [Susanna Zammataro]: In general, change the way we talk about
37:43 road safety and it's exactly what the previous Decade of Action has been trying to do very hard,
37:52 and through the concept and this whole concept of the safe system approach.
37:57 Building the understanding and road safety is a shared responsibility as some of the
38:02 previous speakers have mentioned. So even when you just look at speed,
38:06 whether you are a driver or you are a policy maker or law enforcement agent,
38:10 or a road designer, your responsibility does not increase or decrease accordingly.
38:17 [Susanna Zammataro]: Another key lessons learn is that speed
38:20 management really relies on a coordinated and I would say multi-sectoral efforts that as Etienne
38:27 was saying involves infrastructure planning and design the legislation and traffic policy, the
38:35 vehicle safety standards, as well as a combination at the same time of public awareness and deterrent
38:42 based for example on automated enforcement. One of the key recommendations that we got from the
38:48 Stockholm minister on the declaration was that, of course, managing speed to safe levels must be
38:55 a priority in the next decade, but also address it as it has been said in a very holistic manner.
39:02 [Susanna Zammataro]: This is especially important
39:04 for low and middle income countries, where we know that there is in general insufficient
39:09 road safety management capacity, or low capacity for speed enforcement
39:16 for vehicle safety standards, for fleet monitoring and public awareness. We can only really attain
39:24 impressive results when these interventions come all together and are combined and made possible
39:31 by as well appropriate levels of human and financial resource. Concluding in terms of
39:37 missed opportunities, which was initially your probably question, I would say that
39:43 if two things come to my mind, one was probably importance to engage youth and the private sector.
39:50 [Susanna Zammataro]: It was only towards the end of the Decade of
39:53 Action that we have seen growing attention to and also space I would say, being made for these two
39:59 fundamental stakeholders and the potential of the contribution of the private sector to road safety,
40:06 including of course on this specific issue of speed still remains largely untapped today.
40:12 I hope we'll have a chance to come back later to this during the debate.
40:16 [Binyam Reja]: Yeah.
40:19 Great. Thank you so much Susanna. That's great. Really showing [inaudible] the missed opportunity
40:27 engaging with the private sector [inaudible] is a key one. This is why I think in the second Decade
40:33 of Action, moving forward, engaging the private sector in different circumstances,
40:39 including the financing platform, John Todt mentioned would be key. The multi-sectoral aspect
40:46 is also really important. Okay. Now I'd like to now bring in Mr. Hart Schafer our Vice
40:53 President for South Asia and ask him what we've been doing especially in South Asia Region.
40:58 [Binyam Reja]: We've been doing quite
41:00 a number of activities over the several years,
41:03 and perhaps if you can maybe give us a little bit of a flavor of what we've been doing in terms
41:08 of policies, interventions related to road safety management. Hart over to you please.
41:14 [Hartwig Schafer]: Thank you Benyam and good afternoon. Good evening.
41:18 Good morning to our colleagues and friends who are part of this important event, and thanks
41:22 for inviting me to this UN global Road Safety Week event. For South Asia Road Safety is a key issue.
41:32 South Asia accounts for 10% of the global vehicle fleet, but for 25% of all road crash death. So it
41:40 is a development issue because road crashes hit the most vulnerable segments of the society.
41:47 Very often cyclists, pedestrians in low income and poor communities, we are making that a priority,
41:56 but when we think of South Asia at this time of course, our thoughts are with the people
42:02 of South Asia who are traveling with a devastating second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
42:08 [Hartwig Schafer]: What the pandemic has shown
42:11 is a clear link between road safety and overall management of health and public health systems,
42:19 because road crashes, clearly the injuries are taking away scars capacity that is now needed for
42:26 the people to be treated for COVID-19. So if we improve road safety, then we are actually freeing
42:32 up resources when the next pandemic is going to hit. State-of-the-art emergency care services
42:39 are good for resilience against the pandemic, but they're also very important to help with
42:44 trauma victims after road crashes. One of our latest reports on traffic crash injuries and
42:50 disabilities in India, have shown that one of the key factors that we need to, or key gaps we need
42:57 to address is access to medical treatment and safety nets for most crash victims.
43:03 [Hartwig Schafer]: So the first hour after a
43:04 crash we all call the golden hour that can save life, can make a difference between
43:10 remaining alive or being part of the statistics. What is encouraging is that countries in South
43:17 Asia are recognizing that. I want to give you an example of what I see as a game changer. And
43:25 Etienne alluded to it. We need to get to the highest political level with this. It is not
43:31 just something that is in the transport sector. It is an issue that is important for everybody in the
43:39 political cabinet, in the government and two and a half years ago, when we had our annual meetings,
43:46 I had asked for a two pager that I was showing to everyone, or the ministers of finance.
43:50 [Hartwig Schafer]: And I was telling them
43:52 how much they were actually losing in terms of GDP. We know the number is anywhere between
43:59 three and 5% of GDP loss because of lack of road safety or because of road death and
44:08 injuries. I think that gets the attention of the ministers of finance and what we
44:13 have seen in subsequent to that is that they are pulling together cross cabinet working groups,
44:20 commissions. We have seen that together when I was with my friend Jean Todt, when we visited
44:25 Bangladesh and Nepal, there the ministry of transport, but it also included the ministry
44:31 of health, ministry of education, interior and police, because they all have a stake in this.
44:36 [Hartwig Schafer]: I think this cross sectoral
44:38 approach is absolutely critical, and it shows results. If we look at Tamil Nadu for instance,
44:45 Tamil Nadu was able to reduce fatalities by 25% in only three years. It was because they invested
44:55 in trauma care centers, they invested in speed enforcement systems and they
45:00 brought all the stakeholders together to own this challenge. Similar efforts are going on in India
45:06 and in Bangladesh. Both have recently adopted landmark reform and legislation to address road
45:14 safety and transport management. We are also looking in engaging in Sri Lanka and Pakistan
45:20 to build better institutions and to manage road safety, not only at the federal level,
45:26 but also at the state or the provincial level, which is very important.
45:29 [Hartwig Schafer]: In countries with the federal system,
45:31 we need to address it at the federal, the state and the municipal level. I think on
45:36 the municipal level, we'll talk about that in a little while. What is important here is,
45:40 and I'm very proud of this, that we are working as a World Bank very closely with the UN family
45:46 in country, but also at the corporate level. That is important for the advocacy, and it helps us to
45:52 bring together our joint power and efforts and comparative advantage to address this
45:59 everywhere from enforcement, capacity building to infrastructure investments and to institution
46:05 building. So with, let me finish here this first question, but I'm very happy to be here.
46:11 [Binyam Reja]: Great. Thank you Hart for your passion
46:15 and for your support, it's really encouraging to hear that the bank has been at the forefront of
46:22 addressing the road safety problem in South Asia and to actually see the example you give about
46:28 Tamil Nadu. I also really like the evidence that you presented to the finance ministers,
46:35 really this [inaudible] policy dialogue is what is really important to show them what is the cost in
46:41 economic terms, because that's [inaudible] what you really understand from Finance
46:44 ministers in many countries. So to get them to buy into this, to get a cross-sector cabinet,
46:52 multi-sector intervention, is really important and you are showing us that [inaudible]
46:57 and that could be replicated in any in other, around the world. So this is really great.
47:03 [Binyam Reja]: Okay. So moving on. So now
47:06 let's talk about ... Hart you mention about COVID in South Asia and India in particular in Nepal.
47:15 Of course our thoughts are there with our colleagues, friends and all the people with really
47:20 this devastating COVID that they're going through. So they're rebuilding thinking now, hopefully
47:33 in a post COVID world, hopefully it'll come soon to our developing countries to South Asia,
47:39 but I wanted to have a little bit of a discussion as we enter a post COVID world,
47:45 how we will see road management and safety to be integrated into a green recovery that
47:52 many countries would take. I'm going to ask John Todt first on this question, especially
48:01 as it relates to how we will move forward, how you see we can make.
48:09 [Binyam Reja]: So, as you would remember John, we had
48:14 this third global minister of meeting in Stockholm that actually was creating quite a lot of momentum
48:21 about road safety, about speed management. Now this was of course countries now get diverted
48:30 in focusing COVID-19 pandemic, but how do you see we can actually then continue to create this
48:40 awareness and momentum to all the stakeholders about road safety, even while we are in
48:49 COVID context or as we enter the post COVID world. Over to you Mr. Todt.
48:58 [Jean Todt]: Thank you. Thank you for that. In terms
49:02 of the question about COVID-19 overshadowing our work in road safety, I will challenge
49:09 us to instead focus on how it has provided new opportunities to achieve our global goals. It has
49:18 forced us to be agile and responsive. I would like to highlight three reflections to support this.
49:27 First, the world continued to rely on mobility during the pandemic, which means the importance of
49:34 road safety was always there. 40 months ago, when curfews and lockdown were being imposed globally,
49:42 we were not yet sure how COVID-19 pandemic will affect road safety and transport.
49:48 [Jean Todt]: Today, we see how the pandemic
49:51 has had a significant impact on the world's mobility sector. Restrictions have resulted
49:57 in everyone moving far less than previously, and about public transport and mass transit was
50:05 hit the hardest. But we have also seen that even during a global health crisis, the world
50:12 continued to rely on mobility, the movement of essential workers, transport of food and goods,
50:19 delivery services, dissemination of vaccines and humanitarian and emergency relief services,
50:26 have only been possible with a safe, reliable and connected transport. Those in the poorer places,
50:36 which were also hard hit by the virus, have not shared our privilege to stay at home.
50:42 [Jean Todt]: It makes road safety more relevant than ever.
50:46 Second, some of the shifts in mobility pattern and new [inaudible] designed as a result of COVID-19
50:53 response, has propelled us closer to some targets, especially in greener and more active mobility.
51:01 Because of the change in landscape as a result of COVID-19 response,
51:06 we have seen any policy makers, especially in cities,
51:10 review their street designs, their road safety policies, and modified their mobility system.
51:17 For example, many cities redesigned street to increase cycling, walking and [inaudible] access.
51:25 This reported safer mobility and concurrently prevented the spread of the virus.
51:30 [Jean Todt]: What COVID-19 has shown us is the
51:34 importance of an integrated approach for making cities more sustainable, resilient and inclusive.
51:42 If we can position road safety effectively, we can access the crisis stimulus packages
51:48 that are supporting the green transition, as well as the expansion of sustainable infrastructure
51:56 and transport. Additionally, with a change in demand and use of transport,
52:01 COVID-19 has also pushed us to integrate more digital technology to deliver new needs and roads.
52:09 [Jean Todt]: It has also given a bigger role to automation.
52:13 Going forward, mobility operators across the sector will need a strong ability to
52:19 forecast [inaudible] and adjust route planning and staffing in response becoming more digital, more
52:27 collaborative and more innovative and continuing to transform the transport sector for the better.
52:33 Third and last, we have seen the commonality between the pandemic and the road safety, in
52:40 both it effects on the most vulnerable. We should roll on this as we reposition our effort during
52:47 COVID-19 recovery. The vulnerable people are the ones who are most impacted when a crisis hits.
52:54 [Jean Todt]: COVID-19 response and achieving road safety will
52:58 benefit the most vulnerable. It is a spirit of social inclusion that we should rebuild better on
53:05 both fronts. Furthermore, access to safe mobility helps the most vulnerable access to decent work
53:12 and education, addresses the gender equality in access to mobility, and it also helps us rebuild
53:20 for more sustainable cities and communities, therefore to address speed is also covered.
53:27 [Binyam Reja]:
53:30 Great. That was really great Mr. Todt. I see you see also opportunity basically in the COVID
53:39 crisis. It's interesting, the word crisis in the Chinese language has two characters. It's called
53:47 [Chinese 00:53:46] the first character says it's danger and the second character is an opportunity.
53:52 So in any crisis you have danger and opportunity. So I think we have to really seize this moment,
54:00 this green recovery to position road safety as a key development issue that
54:08 can actually ... has a much more impact. That was really great. Now I'm going to bring Mamta
54:21 Murthi our Vice President for Human Development
54:24 to speak a little bit about the human development dimension of COVID-19 and ... road safety issue.
54:34 [Binyam Reja]: So, Mamta you know that over 60 million deaths
54:40 have now occurred globally since the first fatal road crash that occured more than a century ago,
54:47 which are speed related. We expect a further 25% increase on this number over the next decade
54:55 if concrete actions are not taken. In the public health world, this has been considered a silent
55:01 pandemic since 2004. COVID was recognized as a pandemic early last year and has seen a massive
55:09 and rapid mobilization of governments and private sector to address this issue. What lessons should
55:16 we take from COVID-19 response when comparing this two public health pandemics? How can we
55:23 [inaudible] a silent pandemic and how we can get a massive response [inaudible]?
55:30 [Mamta Murthi]: Thank you Ben.
55:37 Hello to everyone who's on this call. It's a real pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
55:46 Let me say three things in response to your question. First of all, we need to acknowledge the
55:53 massive casualties that occur because of lack of road safety. I believe when I was looking at
56:01 these numbers last night, it's 1.5 million deaths a year and 50 million accidents a year. So this is
56:10 no small number, this is staggering. While we are focused on deaths, both in the case of road safety
56:17 and in the case of COVID-19, I think we also need to think about the lingering effects on people and
56:26 on their quality of life, both the survivors of road accidents and the survivors of COVID.
56:34 [Mamta Murthi]: So without a doubt,
56:36 this is a big issue, and all of us at this point know somebody who has been touched by a road
56:44 accident or touched by COVID and it prompts us to think about what we can learn from one pandemic,
56:54 for the other issue of road safety. Let me focus, not on the
57:01 multiple aspects that everyone has spoken about eloquently. Let me focus on behavior change,
57:08 as a very important element, which we have learned about through COVID-19 and which is relevant for
57:16 road safety. We know from COVID-19, that there is a lot of vaccine hesitancy. This is true the world
57:25 over. Now, developing countries are at the moment not receiving enough vaccines, but we do know
57:33 from surveys that even if they were to receive vaccines, there is significant vaccine hesitancy.
57:38 [Mamta Murthi]:
57:39 A large number of people when asked if they will take a vaccine in a developing country,
57:44 say they won't, or they say they are unsure. In fact, there are more people who are unsure
57:51 than people who say no, but we also know that successful information campaigns,
57:58 information from people who are influential, they could be community leaders, they could be
58:05 religious leaders, they could be pop stars, they could be sportsmen.
58:09 We know that this has an impact on the receptivity of the population towards the message.
58:16 Here is one lesson that I think does carry over from the pandemic to road safety.
58:21 [Mamta Murthi]: Receiving information,
58:24 receiving the nudge that is required to make the change, that's required to make the change about
58:31 reducing speed, about wearing a helmet, about looking carefully when you cross a road and all
58:38 of this can have an impact on how people conduct themselves on a road. This can impact road safety.
58:49 Finally, let me be a bit contrarian and depart from the analogy of the pandemic.
58:59 COVID-19 is an infectious disease, it came upon us suddenly, it has spread rapidly, caused massive
59:06 death and desolation, but I would like to make an analogy with chronic disease. I think that's much
59:15 more relevant to road safety. Chronic disease is about how we behave on a day-to-day basis.
59:21 [Mamta Murthi]: Do we eat well? Do we exercise?
59:24 Do we cut back on smoking? Do we engage in fewer risky behaviors from a health standpoint?
59:35 This I feel is a more appropriate analogy to road safety, because just like in daily life,
59:41 we underestimate the risk of not getting exercise or we underestimate the risk of poor nutrition,
59:49 or we think, what will one additional cigarette do? Similarly,
59:55 we underestimate the risk of high speeds. What will one additional kilometer per hour
01:00:03 by way of speeding do? Yet we saw this excellent evidence presented earlier about the impact of
01:00:10 speeding or what will not wearing a helmet as I ride my motorcycle today
01:00:16 do? I think there is a lot that can be learned from the way chronic disease is managed.
01:00:24 [Mamta Murthi]: We know that giving people information,
01:00:28 nudging them towards better behavior, fiscal and other government policies such as
01:00:34 taxing cigarettes or taxing sugary drinks, other forms of community engagement can affect behavior.
01:00:47 This I feel is a very useful analogy that could be transferred over to road safety, helping people
01:00:54 engage in the right kinds of behaviors that make roads safer for pedestrians and for people who are
01:01:03 using other forms of transport. We actually did a very interesting report on this. It's
01:01:08 called The High Toll of Traffic Injuries, where we identified a number of best buys in road safety.
01:01:16 [Mamta Murthi]: These are interventions
01:01:19 that deliver a return very quickly in terms of reduced fatality and reduced injury.
01:01:27 They also cost very little. So my sense is that we want to learn from
01:01:34 the management of chronic disease, we want to learn from that and take forward some of
01:01:39 these investments that we have identified in our publication on the high toll of traffic injuries.
01:01:44 [Binyam Reja]: Okay, great. Thank you Mamta, I think this
01:01:50 is great. I think you've given us a really good food for thought, especially focusing on behavior
01:01:56 and nudging people to adapt better road safety behavior if you will, like better lifestyle. So
01:02:06 I think we would need to bring in a number of behavioral economists really
01:02:12 when we design road safety interventions and how we can nudge people towards a better lifestyles.
01:02:18 I thought that's a very nice way of articulating this issue. Okay, great. Thank you. Let's
01:02:24 now try to move ahead fast. We started late, so we do need to make up some time now.
01:02:30 [Binyam Reja]: So I'm going to bring back
01:02:33 again Hart Schafer to discussion. Then you mention briefly about cities and municipalities in your
01:02:41 first intervention. So I wanted to ask you that. So we are seeing cities being reset in terms of
01:02:47 traffic patterns because of the pandemic. Travel behavior is changing, land use is also changing.
01:02:53 People want to live in the suburb or people want to drive solo instead of public transport.
01:03:00 So how relevant is the speed management for cities in the context of building back better as
01:03:07 we recover from the pandemic crisis? So how should cities now function? What do you see here please?
01:03:15 [Hartwig Schafer]: Well, to the crisis, the pandemic crisis really
01:03:19 brought the focus on the future of transport of mobility and road safety in general. If we look
01:03:24 at the height of the pandemic crisis, the absolute numbers of road incidents was actually going down,
01:03:31 but that could have been because there's less traffic and less mobility because when you dig
01:03:36 deeper and look at the number of fatalities per kilometer traveled, it actually went up.
01:03:41 I think that reflects that streets are empty. Naturally, speeding is going to
01:03:46 increase and with increased speeding you have more severe accidents and incidents.
01:03:51 [Hartwig Schafer]: There is a larger proportion
01:03:53 of the population that is actually using roads as pedestrians, as cyclist and so on. So when
01:04:01 we look at how we come out of this pandemic and we build back better, clearly we need to take
01:04:07 those strengths into account. I think the public will be more cautious in using public transport,
01:04:14 using cars, and there will be a preference for walking and cycling. Naturally, that means
01:04:19 we need to rethink our transportation system, we need to rethink urban mobility as a system
01:04:25 itself. It needs to be less of a car-centric approach as Etienne was saying earlier.
01:04:31 [Hartwig Schafer]: It needs to put low speed streets in place,
01:04:34 streets that are safe for the different user groups. That requires that urban mobility
01:04:42 will have to provide dedicated lanes for pedestrians and cyclists that are safe
01:04:47 and ensure mobility across cities. We see some of those initiatives actually being launched already
01:04:55 in India. We have the Smart City Mission that was recently launched India. It's the title India
01:05:03 Cycles4Change Challenge, and it is supporting 11 cities where they are piloting
01:05:08 working and cycling alongside with motorized traffic. We as development partners can help
01:05:15 by making sure that part of our project finance is actually going into those investments that
01:05:22 are not just the tarmac that gets the road in, but traffic calming investments.
01:05:28 [Hartwig Schafer]: Making sure that there are safe
01:05:30 lanes for pedestrians and cyclists, that there are footpath, and we can also help with policy because
01:05:36 it requires a revision of the urban mobility policies. Lastly, we can help with building
01:05:42 capacity because that's a paradigm change. We need to make sure that those who are in charge of those
01:05:47 policies and investments, actually learn from best practice. As a global institution like the UN,
01:05:54 like the World Bank, we can bring global expertise, whether it is from Barcelona
01:05:59 or from other cities to countries like India or Bangladesh and I think this is something for us,
01:06:06 we are saying we are going to follow the GRID approach in the recovery from the pandemic.
01:06:12 [Hartwig Schafer]: For a Greener,
01:06:12 more Resilient, and more Inclusive Development. And road safety is absolutely integral to that.
01:06:18 [Binyam Reja]: Okay, great. Thank you Hart for that.
01:06:24 Okay. So let's move now to the third topic for our discussion. This is linking development agenda,
01:06:32 attaining synergies among different practices and sectors. I'm going to go back again to Mamta,
01:06:43 our Vice President for Human Development. So let me ask you Mamta, in your role as the Vice
01:06:47 President for Human Development at the World Bank, you oversee a range of agendas including
01:06:53 education, health, gender, social protection in jobs as well human capital project.
01:06:58 How do you see this development agenda items linking to road safety?
01:07:03 Including the safer speeds issue and what are the synergies we should be aiming for if we want to
01:07:08 achieve sustainable improvement in people's life, gender equality and economic growth? Please Mamta.
01:07:17 [Mamta Murthi]: Thank you Ben. So, let me begin by
01:07:21 saying that in human development, we believe in putting people at the center of development and
01:07:28 supporting programs that allow people to access public services so that they can invest
01:07:35 in themselves and have greater opportunities. I would see transport as a key enabler that allows
01:07:45 people to access services like health, like education. It allows people to access jobs.
01:07:52 It's both a key enabler, both transport and safe transport are both a key enabler
01:07:58 and a key equalizer, because this kind of access is essential if we
01:08:03 want to reduce disparities between people living in different geographical areas or
01:08:09 people of different genders or people of different abilities or ages or income levels.
01:08:15 [Mamta Murthi]: Having safe transport, safe,
01:08:20 affordable, accessible transport is essential to human opportunity and human development. Now,
01:08:26 I have an image in my mind about what this looks like, and let me just give two quick examples. If
01:08:34 I'm thinking about a rural area, I immediately think about roads, preferably all weather roads
01:08:40 that can get kids to school. There needs to be some shoulder or something next to
01:08:47 the road so that kids can walk safely. There needs to be some rules and regulations so that
01:08:53 the different forms of transport that are using the road do so in a way that kids remain safe.
01:09:00 [Mamta Murthi]: Very importantly, girls need to be able
01:09:03 to get to school and return from school safely. So that's what I would see as a safe and accessible
01:09:13 transport, supporting human development in a rural area. If I think of an urban area, the image in my
01:09:18 mind is slightly different. I'm thinking about a dense concentration of informal activity of shops,
01:09:27 of restaurants, of offices, of warehouses. People need to be able to reach these places of work,
01:09:34 pedestrians who are walking need to be safe,
01:09:39 different modes of transport need to be accommodated, public transport
01:09:43 should be available, the public transport should be driven or run by drivers who are safe.
01:09:52 [Mamta Murthi]: The train stops need to be safe,
01:09:54 well lit, women need to be able to go to and from work safely. That's the image
01:10:03 that I have in mind. So, while it may defer from a rural to an urban area, while it might defer
01:10:10 in terms of the kinds of economic activity that is supporting, in the end it's about
01:10:15 transport that is an enabler and an equalizer for people to access services and reach jobs.
01:10:21 [Binyam Reja]:
01:10:24 Okay. Wonderful, if I just ask you to continue briefly on the human development agenda,
01:10:31 is there any principles or lessons that you think are transferable
01:10:36 from what we see in the human development agenda to improving road safety outcomes? For instance,
01:10:42 is a transferable experience from various types of engagements from minister level to local
01:10:47 community engagement. Just maybe, perhaps you can say a little bit briefly on that.
01:10:54 [Mamta Murthi]: Let me say that I
01:10:56 believe there are two things that have been very successful in the Human Capital Project
01:11:01 in raising the importance of investing in people. Two lessons which I think are transferable to the
01:11:07 road safety agenda. The first lesson is the need to quantify the impact of investments on both
01:11:17 the quality of life of people, and on economic growth. We've been able to do this using the
01:11:23 human capital index, which was introduced in 2018. This really quantifies the impact of investments
01:11:30 in education or healthcare or safety nets on opportunities for people and on economic growth.
01:11:36 [Mamta Murthi]: I believe something similar. Just
01:11:39 like Hart was talking about earlier, as he did in the case of South Asia, I think quantifying
01:11:44 the impact of investments in road safety on other outcomes, whether it's jobs or inequality
01:11:51 or growth is very important to making the case for road safety investments. The second point
01:11:57 I would make is the multi-sector point, and I think Susanna made it and Hart and
01:12:02 Etienne and others made it. We know that human development depends on many things.
01:12:10 I just talked about how accessing schools through transport is extremely important.
01:12:15 So what we did in the Human Capital Project is that we proposed a whole of government approach.
01:12:22 [Mamta Murthi]: There's a focal
01:12:23 point in government, whether that's at the federal level or at the community level.
01:12:28 This focal point is able to pull together the different parts of government that are needed
01:12:35 to have an impact on a particular outcome of interest. In the case of the Human Capital
01:12:40 Project, these are human capital focal points, and they work with ministries of finance, education,
01:12:46 transport, et cetera to help devise a program that the World Bank and other agencies in partnership
01:12:54 can support in order to improve human development outcomes in country. So something like this I
01:13:01 think would be very helpful for road safety because of its cross sectoral nature.
01:13:07 [Mamta Murthi]: Hart earlier gave the
01:13:09 example of the state of Tamil Nadu, which has been very successful in India in bringing down
01:13:15 road fatalities quite sharply. One of the things that the government of Tamil Nadu did is
01:13:20 they had a cross sector task force to help with this activity. So these are the two
01:13:25 lessons that I think would transfer over from the Human Capital Project to road safety.
01:13:31 [Binyam Reja]: Okay. Wonderful. Thank you Mamta. Okay. So we
01:13:36 have five minutes left in our allotted time. So, I really will have to move fast one, maybe I'll skip
01:13:46 some questions and go on the [inaudible] in technology issue and I would like to ask,
01:13:53 bring back Jean Todt for this question. So Mr. Todt, you have previously spoken about Motorsport
01:14:02 as a development laboratory to advance on and make motoring safer. In regards to the speed issue,
01:14:11 what transferable lessons in technology are there to learn from and what other emerging mechanisms,
01:14:18 systems, technologies would you like to see in the vehicles we see on our streets, particularly
01:14:24 in low middle income countries or part of our broader system response to this issue? Please.
01:14:32 [Jean Todt]:
01:14:36 I believe that Motorsport is an example on effective view of the safe system
01:14:43 approach. We have been able to achieve this because Motorsport provides one of
01:14:49 the most heavily founded platform for automotive research. Its competitive environment results
01:14:57 in accelerated innovation and technological development towards road safety. For example, the
01:15:06 Motorsport world particularly Formula One shows that speed can be controlled and managed during
01:15:15 the opening lap of the last year Bahrain Grand Prix, you may remember the Romain Grosjean
01:15:22 crash when he lost control of his car traveling at 240 kilometers an
01:15:28 hour. When he hit the gas rail barrier at 190 kilometer an hour, snapping is car into two.
01:15:36 [Jean Todt]: We all have seen those survival
01:15:39 images. What have saved Romain Grosjean? Years of research by the FIA Safety Department, resulting
01:15:48 in the development of the latest protecting equipment like helmets, driver overalls,
01:15:56 forward head hand and neck restraints, fire resistant underwear, gloves, improve vehicle
01:16:04 design, like the hollow FIA crash test survival cells, cockpit padding, advent infrastructure
01:16:13 material for absorbing the energy of an impact and the complete absence of any other road users and
01:16:22 specific design circuits. In addition, the prompt response of the rescue team as well as the mental
01:16:29 and physical agility of a trained professional driver to take decisions in a fraction of second.
01:16:37 [Jean Todt]: All these elements combined,
01:16:40 making up a safe system protects your road users, won't make a mistake. Even after the
01:16:47 crash that occurred in Motorsport including the cases with no severe consequences for the driver,
01:16:54 investigations take place. It helps us learn more and reduce potential risk for
01:17:00 similar situation in the future. So, what we saw in Bahrain will not happen again.
01:17:09 When we see the investigation of Romain Grosjean getting into data and getting also into
01:17:20 accident data recorder, we can see the speed and the forces on the car and in here accelerometer
01:17:28 that are fitted inside the driver's ear here to measure the movement of his head in a crash.
01:17:34 [Jean Todt]: It is what we call a
01:17:36 safe system approach. It is a culture of safety embedded into competition,
01:17:42 and I believe this is the most important lesson Motorsport can bring to everyday mobility
01:17:50 as a laboratory. Most of the cars in operation in many parts of the world, do not meet minimum
01:17:58 recommended UN standard that we all well know. If the same volume of production that had occurred
01:18:05 since 2010 is repeated in the next decade, about another 900 million new auto automobiles will be
01:18:13 added to the global fleet by 2030. The majority will be produced and sold in middle income
01:18:21 countries. We need this cars to be fitted with the UN's list of recommended safety standards,
01:18:28 including front and side impact, predestrian protection and electronic stability control.
01:18:34 [Jean Todt]: In the new decade,
01:18:37 what we need the most is a culture of safety.
01:18:40 [Binyam Reja]: Okay. Wow. Wonderful. Thank you
01:18:48 on that. Well, the time is really over. There is one or two minutes, I'd like to maybe ask Susanna
01:18:57 to briefly talk about the technology aspects for safety especially the
01:19:05 technology and the artificial intelligence trend and how you see the big data aspects in improving
01:19:15 road safety. Also maybe to
01:19:20 Etienne Krug from WHO if you can also tell us a little bit the knowledge that we have and the
01:19:27 tools that we have in moving this agenda forward. In particular, are we ready? Are we fully equipped
01:19:35 to bring it all together? So both of you, and then we'll conclude for keeping you a couple
01:19:42 more minutes later than we are scheduled. We started late actually, Susanna first.
01:19:47 [Susanna Zammataro]: Thank you very much Ben,
01:19:50 and maybe in the interest of time, allow me to divert from your question. Actually,
01:19:55 I'm going to answer to your question in one sentence, just by saying that indeed, big data,
01:20:03 artificial intelligence and technology in general will be the greatest allies we have going forward,
01:20:08 and we should stop thinking about technology and artificial intelligence and big data as
01:20:14 being at the same time something that seems very far away from low and middle income
01:20:19 countries. Reality is actually the bank has been doing fantastic work
01:20:22 on how using those tools to harvest those type of data that we need to make informed decision.
01:20:29 [Susanna Zammataro]: Very quickly I want to come back and
01:20:32 that's why I'm dissenting from your question. Come back to the issue of the private sector.
01:20:36 We as IRF have been working very hard with the private sector, trying to illustrate really the
01:20:47 areas of opportunities where companies can make meaningful contribution to road safety outcomes
01:20:53 and also inspire action within the sector. We're doing that even more proactively than that. We're
01:21:00 working on building private sector coalitions in different countries around the world,
01:21:05 and there will be an announcement going on Friday I believe. We need to learn to better harness the
01:21:12 power of corporate resources and the presence in the communities as it was said by others.
01:21:18 [Susanna Zammataro]: One final quick point,
01:21:21 imagine for a moment, the level of impact and the transformational change we could have if we were
01:21:26 able to scale up in the sector, those good examples which exist and are set
01:21:32 by some leading companies today, throughout their supply chain and largely in the sector
01:21:38 via for example an industry code of conduct, which would be backed up at the same time by the robust
01:21:44 knowledge and expertise sharing. If you couple that with policy and regulatory interventions,
01:21:49 you actually have a winning recipe, that's exactly where those partnerships in between the public
01:21:56 and the private sector are so important. We can also start from local communities.
01:22:01 [Susanna Zammataro]: In fact, as Hart was mentioning
01:22:03 and then build it up through the national level. Thank you.
01:22:06 [Binyam Reja]:
01:22:08 Great. That's wonderful. You actually also addressed one of the key questions we were
01:22:12 asked from the participants. Okay. Etienne if you could sum it up for us in terms of whether
01:22:21 we have the knowledge and tools to move forward on this and or what we need more.
01:22:37 Etienne? Okay. I don't know whether he is still with us, maybe
01:22:44 Hart then I can give you the floor to sum it up for us. Also, maybe if you see the technologies
01:22:51 and what [inaudible] heard, just that you think from the World Bank perspective.
01:22:56 [Hartwig Schafer]: No, I think this has been
01:22:59 a very rich discussion. I really want to thank all the panelists. So for me when I look at low speed
01:23:05 streets, it has at least a triple width, it's healthier and safer, that's important because
01:23:10 it keeps us safe, clearly. The second, it's greener, it helps us to actually
01:23:16 get better air quality in urban centers where we need it most and, it is better for social,
01:23:21 cultural and economic development. If you're sitting in the car, you're going through,
01:23:25 if you are walking as a pedestrian or a cyclist, you may go to the shop [inaudible] on. So
01:23:30 it helps businesses, it revitalizes inner cities and I think this is the way to go.
01:23:36 [Hartwig Schafer]: We see that in the developed
01:23:37 world happening. When we look at Barcelona as an example, I mentioned that earlier,
01:23:42 I think we can do it in the developing world. So I look to continuing
01:23:46 on addressing road safety in a very strong partnership with the UN, with the FIA Foundation,
01:23:52 Bloomberg Philanthropy, IRF and so on. Thank you very much for this interesting discussion.
01:23:57 [Binyam Reja]:
01:23:59 Great. Thank you Hart. Well, this has been indeed a very rich discussion, very insightful,
01:24:06 very collaborative. We've had quite a lot of activities and questions from the audience.
01:24:12 Our team has been also responding to them. I think many of you have already covered a lot of them.
01:24:18 Let me just thank again the panelists, Etienne Krug, John Todt, Mamta Murthi, Susanna Zammataro,
01:24:25 Hart Schafer. Thank you all and ... thank you also for Alina and Radek, and for Pablo for
01:24:33 opening this important seminar webinar. I would also like to invite you all to come for the next
01:24:41 session that we have upcoming on the speed management guide book that's going to be launched.
01:24:48 [Binyam Reja]: Okay. So this will bring it to close
01:24:52 our session, and I wish you all a good day.
01:24:56 Good, safe, good day and we will continue the discussion. We will reconnect in the future. Ciao.
01:25:03 [Susanna Zammataro]: Thank you. Bye-bye.
01:25:06 [Binyam Reja]: Thank you. Thank you.
01:25:08 [Mamta Murthi]: Thanks everyone. Bye-bye.

RESOURCES

Publications

Guide for Determining Readiness for Speed Cameras and Other Automated Enforcement

Guide for Road Safety Interventions: Evidence of What Works and What Does Not Work

Road Crash Trauma, Climate Change, Pollution and the Total Costs of Speed

Speed Variation Analysis: A Case Study for Thailand's Roads

FAQs on Speed Management

See more GRSF publications

See more World Bank's publications on Road Safety

Websites

The Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF)

Speed Management Hub

UN Global Road Safety Week

Other World Bank Resources

World Bank & Transport

World Bank Blogs on Road Safety

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Transforming Transportation 2021: Mobility For Recovery

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Global Roadmap of Action Toward Sustainable Mobility

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October 23, 2019

Global Roadmap of Action Toward Sustainable Mobility

Climate-Smart Mobility: Where to Invest?

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November 10, 2021

Climate-Smart Mobility: Where to Invest?

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