These are the calculations of the World Bank experts in the institutions last report on the road safety in Europe and Central Asia, named “Death on Wheels”.
With its more than 1000 fatalities (and more than 10 000 injured) annually, which is a death rate of 13.2 on 100 000, our country is next to the middle figure for all Europe (13.4) according to the World Health Organization. However if we look from an European Union perspective, we are one of the worst performing, followed only by Slovenia (14.6), Poland and Estonia (14.7), Greece (14.9), Slovakia (15.1) and Latvia (17.9). Bulgaria is still very far behind the leaders such as the Netherlands for example (4.8).
From 18th to 20th of November 2009 the problem was discussed in depth during the First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Moscow, which made a call to the United Nations General Assembly to announce the period of 2011-2020 as the Decade of Action on Road Safety.
Special attention was given to the role of the young people, because road accidents are death cause No 1 for children (5-14) and young people (15-29) in Europe. According to WHO only for 2004 4180 children and 39300 young people died on the Old Continent. Worldwide the statistics is even more shocking. Young people under 25 years represent almost 40% of the victims of road traffic injuries. Annually, we lose around 400 000 young lives and damage millions more. This means that every month, we are losing more than 30 000 lives and every day, a day just like this one, more than 1000 young lives are coming to an end.
To address this global challenge 25 young people from 6 continents came out with common declaration and common action plan during the conference in Moscow. YOURS – Youth for road safety is the first global youth-led NGO for road safety, which is created by and for the young people under the mentorship of WHO. A partner in this initiative on behalf of Bulgaria is Open Youth – the only Bulgarian NGO to be officially invited to the Moscow meeting.