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Blair Says Bad Driving More Dangerous Than War
Tony Blair and ex-Formula One champion Michael Schumacher have led calls for a world conference to end road deaths. The prime minister said motor crashes were the planet's second-biggest killer of young men after HIV/Aids. Mr Schumacher added that the international community needed to wake up to a "horrific waste of life". A recent World Health Organization report found that nearly 400,000 under-25s are killed in road traffic collisions every year. It is estimated that road traffic crashes cause 1.2 million deaths every year, including those of 1,000 young people every day. Each week 70 children are killed or seriously injured in the UK. Up until this point this was a worthwhile news article. BBC editors must have added the rest. Mr Blair made his remarks in a video statement for UN global road safety week in London. He said: "Every minute of every day a child is killed or seriously injured on the world's roads. "Road crashes are the second leading cause of death for young men after HIV/Aids, and in some African countries more than 70% of those killed on the roads are young breadwinners. Presumably this includes those killed while driving by bandits and carjackers. "It is becoming clear that road injury has a serious impact on the wider development goals we are all trying to achieve." Mr Schumacher said: "Road crashes kill on the scale of malaria or tuberculosis, yet the international community has not woken up to this horrific waste of life. "That is why I strongly support the Make Roads Safe campaign and the proposal that the United Nations organise a first ever UN ministerial conference to tackle this preventable loss of life." And hire my contracting company to make them safe. Edmund King, executive director of the RAC Foundation and a co-ordinator of the Make Roads Safe campaign, said that half of all children killed or seriously injured on the roads in England come from deprived areas. If they were deprived of cars this wouldn't happen. "The road safety community in the UK is united behind the call for a UN global ministerial conference to give urgently-needed direction to road injury prevention." Yes, the UN is the answer to everything. Posted by: Glenmore 2007-04-24 |
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