Global Road Safety Initiative
The Global Road Safety Initiative was started as a five year project in 2005 and has now been taken on into a second phase funded by Michelin, Renault, Shell, Total and Toyota. The first phase was funded by Ford, General Motors, Honda, Michelin, Renault, Shell and Toyota. The Global Road Safety Partnership was chosen by the funding companies to be the implementing agency for the project in both phases.
The Initiative targets three regions or very large countries with substantial road safety problems. In the first phase, these were ASEAN, China, and Brazil. In the second phase, Africa and India have been added. Independent reviews have been made of the first phase of the Initiative and can be downloaded from the column on the right of this page. Key findings from the review were:
- The review team concluded that GRSI-1 was an important, well focused, effective, and efficient programme within the worldwide road safety alliance. In addition to a strong focus on building local partnerships to address the pressing road safety concerns in a number of countries, the reviewers specifically noted that GRSI-1 has made a very direct and important contribution to the implementation of the recommendations of the World Report for Road Injury Prevention. In particular, GRSI-1 has promoted the implementation of the Good Practice Manuals (GPMs) for the four key risk factors—seat belts, helmets, speed and drink-driving. Until very recently, no other organization was as focused on this particular objective nor was providing as much finance to support this key component of the worldwide road safety campaign.
- In ASEAN, GRSI focused on the implementation of the Good Practice Manuals and in particular supported efforts to increase the use of helmets by motorcycle users. This was considered very appropriate. Also, in this region, GRSI’s efforts to use its convening power to facilitate the regional sharing of information between local road safety professionals, through the organization and financing of an annual regional conference, was also judged to be important.
- In China, GRSI addressed four key road safety issues in a complex and difficult institutional framework. Two of these projects are already complete--to increase the safety of vulnerable road users at road junctions in urban areas and a city project to reduce drink-driving. Two are still ongoing for speed management and child safety.
- In Brazil, the programme was judged to be particularly noteworthy because of its originality, and its emphasis on building local partnerships. Other international observers have also noted the uniqueness of this programme, including the Bloomberg Philanthropies foundation who are extending the partnership model that we developed and that GRSI funded, when designing and implementing their own road safety programme in Brazil.
The Global Road Safety Initiative is a “rolling” initiative, and open to increasing its membership. The Initiative has its own Steering Committee, currently chaired by Renault. New members may join for a minimum five year term. For more information about membership, please contact us at grsp@ifrc.org.
The Initiative builds on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development Sustainable Mobility Project, which in 2004 identified increasing road traffic fatality rates in developing countries as an impediment to mobility becoming sustainable by 2030.
GRSI focuses on the critical road safety issues identified in the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention (2004, WHO and World Bank). These include pedestrian safety, drinking and driving, helmet use, speed management and seat belt use. GRSI provides training to road safety professionals in developing countries, and supports pilot projects to improve road safety in these countries.
For detailed information on the on-the-ground work in GRSI, see our region and country pages.
