WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the WHO side-event on country progress towards halving road traffic deaths by 2030 – 20 July 2026

Special Envoy Jean Todt,

Michelle Yeoh,

Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,

Welcome, and thank you all for being here.

Road deaths as you know are falling.

Between 2011 and 2025, the global death rate fell by more than one fifth.

And yet, the decline is nowhere near fast enough to meet our goal of a 50 percent drop in deaths and serious injuries by 2030.

At the mid-point in the Decade of Action for Road Safety, the time for talk is over.

We must double down on delivery.

Doubling down means moving from pilot projects to national policy, from good intentions to legislation that is enforced, and from short-term funding to sustained, predictable investment.

We need bold national strategies with clear targets, timelines and budgets.

We need a paradigm shift towards making safety a priority.

We must design streets for people, not motor vehicles.

And we must promote a vision of mobility that protects people, prosperity and the planet.

The Global Plan for the Decade of Action gives us the roadmap. It rests on five pillars as we know: safer roads and mobility, safer vehicles, safer road users, safer speeds, and better post-crash care. Progress on any one pillar helps, but real change comes when countries act on all five together.

Speed remains one of the biggest determinants of whether a crash is survivable. Lower speed limits, consistently enforced, save lives in every country, at every income level.

And the basics still matter most: seatbelts and child restraints, motorcycle helmets, and strict laws against drink- and drug-driving. Where these are enforced, deaths fall. Where they are not, progress stalls.

Every government represented here has valuable lessons to share.

Brazil, Ireland, Morocco, Spain, Thailand and the United Kingdom offer lessons in leadership and coordination.

Brazil has shown what sustained political commitment and city-level action can achieve. Ireland has embedded road safety within its wider public health agenda. Morocco has strengthened enforcement and driver licensing. Spain has invested in safer urban design and lower city speed limits. Thailand continues to tackle the particular risks facing motorcyclists, who account for a large share of its road deaths. And the United Kingdom has built one of the world's most effective systems for road safety data and research.

Each of you can learn from the others, and none of you should feel you must start from zero.

This meeting is about sharing what works and why.

WHO is proud to play a leading role for the UN on road safety.

We help Member States build safe systems, and strengthen strategies, policies, laws and regulations.

We help translate evidence into national action plans, and we support legislative reform on the risk factors we know save lives: speed, drink-driving, seatbelts, child restraints and helmets.

We host the Global Road Safety Leaders Network, which supports national road safety agencies.

We lead the creation of global guidelines like the Global Plan for the Decade of Action on Road Safety.

And we track progress at all levels through regular global status reports.

Last year, there were over 1.1 million road deaths globally - more than two every minute.

The burden falls heaviest on the young and on the poorest countries. Road traffic injuries remain among the leading causes of death for children and young people aged 5 to 29 worldwide. And more than 90 percent of road deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, even though they have less than 60 percent of the world's vehicles.

Every single one of those deaths is preventable, and none are acceptable.

So today, I ask each of you to leave this room with one concrete commitment: a law you will pass, a budget you will secure, a street you will redesign, or a dataset you will publish. Small, specific commitments, multiplied across every country here, are how we bend the curve before 2030.

Before I close, I think again the Special Envoy Jean Todt for your leadership.

Thank you all for your commitment to making the world's roads safer.

Let's work together to turn pledges into progress.

I thank you.