Road deaths and injuries will surge by 60 per cent over the next 16 years making them a bigger global threat than HIV by 2020, says the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.
It estimates that 3,000 die and 140,000 are injured on the world's roads every day; and 15,000 are disabled for life. In 2002 crashes took almost 1.2 million lives and injured up to 50 million.
If this trend continues, in 16 years road injuries will be the third biggest contributor to the global burden of disease and injury, surpassing HIV, wars, tuberculosis, cerebrovascular disease, pulmonary disease, lower respiratory infections and diarrhoeal diseases.
Road injuries, the WHO estimates, will be number three on the list, beaten only by heart disease and unipolar major depression. In 1990 road injuries were ninth on the list.
The figures have prompted the WHO to make road safety the theme for World Health Day today. The body hosts the event every year to promote awareness and debate on a particular issue.
Yesterday the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, hosted the European Union's transport ministers in Dublin for the signing of a European Road Safety Charter. The charter aims to reduce EU road deaths by at least 50 per cent by 2010.
Road crashes in Ireland have taken 99 lives so far this year, an increase of 22 on the same period last year.
The Government's new road safety strategy will be published in the coming weeks. It aims to reduce road deaths by more than 25 per cent to under 300 in three years.
