The corporate sector has a huge role to play in a United Nations-backed road safety campaign to reduce the number of people killed and injured on the world’s roads.

The 2011-2020 Decade of Action for Road safety, which launches on May 11, aims to save five million lives and prevent 50 million injuries.

Currently more than 1.3 million people are killed on the world’s roads each year and this is forecast to rise to 1.9 million by 2020. In addition, 50 million people are injured on the world’s roads each year.

The 11-point United Nations’ declaration supporting the Decade of Action includes encouraging ‘organisations to contribute actively to improving work-related road safety through adopting the use of best practices in fleet management’.

One of the UK-based supporters of the initiative is the Driving for Better Business campaign, which is managed by RoadSafe.
Prince Michael of Kent, a patron of the Driving for Better Business campaign, said at its spring seminar: “The corporate sector has an important role to play in achieving the aim of the Decade of Action by placing the management of drivers high on business agendas.”

The Driving for Better Business campaign has almost 60 ‘business champions’ drawn from across the private, public and voluntary sectors to promote the message that good management of at-work drivers makes sound business sense.

The campaign has calculated that if 50% of businesses that currently manage people who drive at work implemented initiatives similar to those of the ‘business champions’ around five million lives globally would be saved.