EA - Road Safety: The Silent Epidemic Impacting Youth by AIPFoundation

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Road Safety: The Silent Epidemic Impacting Youth, published by AIPFoundation on August 11, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. KEY FACTS Road crashes are the #1 cause of death for young people aged 5-29, who account for 52% of the global population. Road crashes are the #8 cause of death for the population overall, causing at least 1.35 million deaths and 50 million injuries per year. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) account for 93% of worldwide road crash fatalities, despite having 60% of the world’s registered vehicles. Death rates are three times higher in LMICs than in high-income countries, and LMICs are home to 90% of the world's population under 30 years old. While 500 children die on the roads each day, this crisis not only affects families and sociocultural welfare, but also the workforce of developing nations. LMICs miss out on 3-6% GDP growth per year due to the healthcare burden, lost labor, and lost welfare caused by road crashes, summing to a global economy loss of at least $500 billion USD per year keeping as many as 70 million people in poverty worldwide. Road fatalities and injuries can be effectively curbed in a cost-effective manner through targeted initiatives such as: child seatbelts & restraints, helmet use, speed reduction, drink driving prevention, "forgiving" road infrastructure, school zones, global advocacy, and public awareness campaigns. DISCLAIMER OF BIAS This is a rapid, non-exhaustive investigation of this cause area. This paper is written by Molly Stoneman and Jimmy Tang, two people passionate about road safety and working for AIP Foundation – a road safety NGO in Southeast Asia – who have studied road safety as an underfunded cause area in their professional work but are not academic experts. Road safety is an extremely dimensional and interconnected issue with cross-cutting studies in urban planning, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, environmental sustainability, public health, education access, poverty, gender studies, human rights, and more fields. There may be relevant evidence that we have missed or assumptions we have overlooked, especially pertinent to how road safety issues manifest differently by country (and even by city within countries). This paper aims to provide a high-level look at the global problem for young people 5-29 years old. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? What is the #1 killer of people aged 5-29? The answer is not malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, or infectious diseases – but road crashes. Road traffic crashes now represent the eighth leading cause of death globally, claiming more than 1.35 million lives each year and causing up to 50 million injuries, and is on track to move up in the list to the seventh leading killer by 2030. Around the world, someone dies from a road accident every 25 seconds. This is equivalent to 5.2 jumbo jet planes crashing down per day – which would surely make global news. Yet the head of the United Nations Road Safety Fund has called road deaths and injuries a “silent epidemic,” which is needlessly ignored by many who think that crashes are accidental, unavoidable, and each individual’s responsibility to prevent. Crashes are not inevitable, but preventable. Crashes are not a failure by an individual, but a failure by systems of transport. Of course, not all roads are created equal. On a global level, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have seen rapid motorization that far outpaces the rate of road infrastructure development. There continues to be a strong association between the risk of road traffic deaths and the income level of a country. This is supported by the fact that LMICs account for 93% of worldwide road crash fatalities, despite having 60% of the world’s registered vehicles. Death rates are three times higher in LMICs than in high-income countries. That’s ri...