As country leaders head into next week’s first ever UN High-level Meeting on Road Safety, iRAP has released 3 new resources to assist understanding of national progress in making roads safer and inform decisive action based on the human and economic benefit of achieving UN Targets 3 and 4 by 2030.

On 30 June and 1 July, leaders from across the globe will gather at the United Nations in New York and iRAP is calling on every country to actively participate, share success and commit to implement the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030 to save lives and serious injuries.

“Global agendas cannot succeed without concrete progress at the national level, where legislatures play a profoundly important role,” said His Excellency Mr Abdulla Shahid, President of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly, speaking at a UN Plenary Meeting on Monday.

iRAP Global Programme and Communications Manager Judy Williams said, “We have been working with countries, their leaders and their Permanent Missions to the UN over recent months to prepare their participation and put knowledge and data at their fingertips to support action.

iRAP’s new resources include:

Where We Work Map Enhancements
iRAP’s Where We Work Map features enhanced national information. Countries can see at a glance national iRAP activity, road safety data, if safer roads policy exists and how to connect with their national road assessment programme. By selecting a country, people can drill down to explore national information. See the map at https://irap.org/about-us/where-we-work/

Overview Summary of Countries’ Progress
We’ve released a brochure which shares national safer roads activity for nearly 150 countries and the human and economic benefit of achieving UN Targets 3 and 4 by 2030. It is also available as a web-based table The table provides brief and easy to cut-and-paste text that can be inserted in documents and speeches, and enables comparison of activity across the world. The web-based table can be filtered to a country, key word or multiple countries based on income level or global region and the filtered range printed to PDF. Explore the table at https://irap.org/about-us/where-we-work/ or download the full summary brochure here.

Library of Best Practice National Strategies
See our growing library of published National Strategies and Action Plans with safer roads impact for every country on earth! They include 3-star or better target commitments to improve the safety of road infrastructure and investment and are best practice examples other countries can follow.

• See the strategy library here and audio-visual summary below.
• For those still developing their 2030 strategies and annual action plans, we encourage you to use and share the library as an inspirational guide. Sample infrastructure targets and actions for inclusion are detailed here.

iRAP CEO Rob McInerney said, “By acting boldly and decisively, with a focus on action and delivery in line with the Global Plan and High-Level Meeting, world leaders can change the course of the road trauma pandemic and save thousands of lives.

“We look forward to supporting our partners and governments in more than 100 countries as they draw on the Global Plan to develop and implement national and local action plans to halve global road deaths and injuries by 2030.”

UN Global Targets 3 and 4 include ensuring all new roads are built to a 3-star or better standard for all road users (Target 3), and more than 75% of travel is on the equivalent of 3-star or better roads for all road users by 2030 (Target 4).

Achieving Target 4 by 2030 stands to save 450,000 lives a year and 100 million deaths and serious injuries over 20 years, with $8 of savings for every $1 invested.

For more information

• For national support to eliminate high-risk roads in your country: contact the RAP Lead listed on iRAP’s Where We Work Map or Global Programme Director Greg Smith on greg.smith@irap.org
• On the UN High-level Meeting, your last questions answered: click here
• On iRAP’s work to support countries in the lead up to the High-level Meeting: click here
• On how safe your country’s and the world’s roads are, the road attributes that matter, and the human and economic impact of road trauma, click here
• On how safe roads feature in Global Plan for Decade of Action: click here