WORLD DAY OF REMEMBRANCE FOR ROAD TRAFFIC VICTIMS Negros Occidental, Philippines

by May Altarejos-Cueva
Proponent/Chairman
Project C.A.R. E.S.
(Community Activities Reaching to Everyone thru Services)

The World Remembrance Day for Road Crash Victims finds its origin in the UN Resolution A/60/5 dated October 26, 2005, which adopted the World Day “as the appropriate acknowledgement for victims of road traffic crashes and their families” and called for its recognition by Member States and the International Community.
The World Day of Remembrance is held across the globe to give recognition to victims of road crashes and the plight of their loved ones who must cope with the emotional and practical consequences of these events.
The day provides an opportunity to draw the public’s attention to road crashes, their consequences and costs, and the measures which can be taken to prevent them. The day also provides an opportunity to remind governments and society of their responsibility to make roads safer.

THE NEED FOR REMEMBRANCE
AND FOR SAFER ROADS
The families of those who have died, and the victims left injured and disabled, remember their experiences only too well. The act of public remembrance is a demonstration to victims that we recognize them - showint them that their humanity is valued, that their loss is our loss and that their suffering is shared, if only through recognizing the tragedy and error of its occurrence.
Road crashes are a leading cause of death globally for children and young people aged between 10 to 24 years, and the third leading cause of death globally among people aged between 30 to 44 years. Every six seconds someone is killed or injured on the world’s roads, including drivers, passengers, motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians. Given the statistics of more than 3,000 people getting killed every day on our world’s roads, with 10% or over 300 are young children – is a road epidemic deadlier and must be feared more than AIDS or AH1N1. 260,000 children are killed on the world’s roads each year, and by 2015 road crashes are predicted by the World Health Organization to be the leading cause of death and disability for children.
Globally, each year over 1.2 million people are killed in road crashes – a greater number of deaths than those caused by malaria. Millions more people are left seriously injured and disabled.
Over 90% of the world’s road deaths occur in low and middle income countries, including the Philippines. For each person who is killed or injured there is an effect on their family – a father no longer able to work to feed his children, or a schoolchild no longer able to get the education that will give them chances in life. Add all of these effects together, and Negros Occidental and our country as a whole suffers.

ROAD SAFETY IS NO ACCIDENT – IT CAN BE PREVENTED.

It is tragic that most people are not aware that accidents are preventable. Over three-quarters of all deaths are caused by human error, meaning that the driver, the pedestrian, the cyclist or another road user made a fatal error and ended up either killing themselves, or others. Through education, engineering and enforcement of traffic laws, needless deaths can be avoided in the future.

A PUBLIC APPEAL
We would like to invite and encourage everyone to join and support us in helping make our 2009 World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims a successful event. This is the time to remember loved ones or friends lost in a road crash, to know and understand what we can do to improve the safety of our roads, and to call for the Philippine Government’s delegation to Moscow to sign up to the Decade of Action.
We would like to take this opportunity to urge all stakeholders to play an active role in creating safer roads for all Filipinos - specifically, increasing the safety of our roads can be achieved through educating all road users – both drivers and others – on safe behaviour, engineering ‘forgiving roads’ and using a ‘safe systems approach’ which minimizes the effects of human errors, and enforcing the traffic laws that are designed to prevent dangerous drivers and dangerous vehicles from putting other people at risk.
And finally, we would like to remind all Negrenses, all Filipinos that reducing the number of people killed on our roads is not only the responsibility of the traffic police and the government… EVERY ONE of us must use our roads in a manner that does not endanger our lives, or the lives of others!

TO HELP,please promote the World Day of Remembrance through email brigade or uploading the infos in your facebook or website/s.

You can help save lives... please help make November 15 a day of road peace ... please campaign for ZERO-accident.

God bless!



MESSAGE FROM WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
http://www.who. int/violence_ injury_preventio n/media/news/ 2009/16_11_ 2009/en/