UN road safety week focuses on dangers of driving at high speed

The United Nations Road Safety Collaboration is organising the event under the slogan “Save Lives #Slowdown”.
Hundreds of events are being organised across the world to highlight the dangers of excessive and inappropriate speed and to promote solutions for managing speed, a major cause of road traffic death and injury. 
A key component of the week’s initiatives at the local level are “Slow Down Days”, during which activities are being organised for the public on the streets of towns and cities as a way of promoting safer speeds.
Thailand joined the campaign by hosting a road safety event at the United Nations Building in Bangkok on May 7. Nikorn Chamnong, a member of the National Reform Steering Assembly, made the case for road safety at a Cabinet meeting on May 9 by sharing the “Manifesto to make roads safe: Priorities for road safety policy and legislation 2020 and beyond”.
In addition, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Country Office for Thailand, in collaboration with the Ministry of Transport and other key partnes, launched the speed setting guideline as part of an effort to promote road safety on May 10. The guideline was commissioned by WHO with support from the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety. It aims to enable the country to set proper speed limits in provinces. Speed was part of the amendment package endorsed by the Cabinet on October 4, 2016. The launch of this guideline is expected to help the endorsed amendment to materialise.
According to WHO, speed contributes to around one-third of all fatal road traffic crashes in high-income countries, and up to half in low- and middle-income countries. The UN Global Road Safety Week seeks to increase understanding of the dangers of speed and generate action on measures to address speed, thereby saving lives on the roads.