As the UN prepares to adopt a historic commitment to road safety in its new agenda of Global Goals for sustainable development, the international vehicle safety watchdog, Global NCAP is urging faster action to apply minimum crash test standards to all new cars worldwide.
In a keynote speech to the ASEAN Road Safety Forum held in Bandung, Indonesia on 21 September David Ward, Global NCAP’s Secretary General welcomed, “the UN’s strongest ever commitment to road safety” but warned that “the new target to cut road fatalities in half by 2020 requires the urgent adoption of the UN’s most important vehicle safety standards”.
Highlighting increasing motorisation rates across the world, Ward insisted that “level of vehicle safety standards will need to be raised” and called for “the universal application the UN’s front and side impact crash tests”.
This proposal is one of a series of recommendations in Global NCAP’s recent report ‘Democratising Car Safety: A Road Map for Safer Cars 2020 which is being submitted to the mid-review conference of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety being held in Brazil in November.
Coinciding with this week’s UN Summit Global NCAP has also released a briefing note on the new agenda of Global Goals. Road safety is to be included in goals 3 and 11 for health and cities and will be supported by a target to cut road deaths and injuries in half by 2020, the end date of the UN Decade of Action.
