
Every day 3,700 people are killed in road crashes and many more suffer serious injuries. Shockingly traffic injuries are now the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5-29 years. The current United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety, despite growth in population and motorisation, has helped slow the increase in road deaths. But in far too many countries the number of people dying or seriously injured in traffic crashes is rising rather than falling. With road safety now included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) much more must be done to stop the carnage on the world’s roads that kills 1.35 million every year. Road deaths and serious injuries are not just unfortunate accidents. They are predictable, preventable, and unacceptable. Evidence shows that setting a road safety target is an effective way to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured in traffic crashes. 2020 will be a crucial year for road safety. The current UN Decade of Action will come to an end and a new global mandate must be decided for road injury prevention. The choice we face is clear: build on the positive experience of stabilizing global road deaths to…