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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Jean Todt

If road deaths were a virus, we’d call it a pandemic. Safer transport helps us all – and we need it urgently

Three women in saris with goods balanced on their head waiting to cross a road as a truck and tuktuk speed past them
Female labourers in Kolkata. About 180,000 people died in road accidents in India last year; a majority of Indian women also reported sexual harassment on public transport. Photograph: EPA

If you had to guess the leading cause of death for children and young people around the world, what would you say? Malaria perhaps? Pneumonia? Suicide? They’re all high up there, but no, it’s road accidents.

Cars have been around for more than 120 years, and we know how to prevent these tragedies. Yet road crashes still claim more than two lives every minute – killing nearly 1.2 million people every year.

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