Global Road Safety Partnership

Global Road Safety Partnership

Global Road Safety Partnership: South Africa

Background to the GRSP / Origin

Initiated by the World Bank Group in February 1999, Global Road Safety Partnership stakeholders have been identifying ways in which they could work together to improve road safety globally.

The Global Road Safety Partnership is one of four Business Partners for Development (BPD) programs initiated by the World Bank. BPD is a project-based initiative that studies, supports and promotes strategic examples of partnerships for the development of communities around the world. The underlying concept of BPD is built on the premise that partnerships benefit the long-term interests of the business sector while meeting the social objectives of communities by helping to create stable social and financial environments.

Road safety offers an opportunity for a wide range of stakeholders to actively engage in addressing the global problem of road crashes, deaths and injuries. Previous efforts by governments and donors to try to improve road safety in developing and transitional countries have had limited success and many interventions simply have not been financially or institutionally sustainable. The Global Road Safety Partnership aims to identify innovative ways to improve road safety by applying the business partnership approach. It produces solid evidence that partnerships offer win-win benefits for all parties and that this approach can be widely used throughout the world.

Vision of the Global Road Safety Partnership

Our vision is "A world free of road crash death and injury."

It is mankind that invented motorised transport just over 100 years ago, an astonishingly valuable mobility tool that has revolutionised global development. Unfortunately, the moving vehicles bring with them huge amounts of energy – far more than a human body can withstand on impact. We allow vehicles and people to come into close contact very regularly, and the resulting losses globally are disastrous – over 3000 people are being killed every day, some 700 of them are children. However, something that mankind has developed can also be controlled by mankind. For example, in the air, where in 2010, not one single fare-paying passenger was killed in the OECD countries.

Some countries have shown that they can bring death and injury down through systematic attention to the legal and regulatory environment, coupled with continuous public education and enforcement of the law. Some cities have shown they can get all their children to and from school safely, year in, year out. Some companies have shown that they can manage large vehicle fleets for years without death or injury. We need to build and extend upon these successes in all sectors of society until we can reap the benefits of motorised mobility without accepting the catastrophic social losses that are now occurring.

Mission of the Global Road Safety Partnership

The Global Road Safety Partnership is dedicated to the sustainable reduction of road-crash death and injury in low- and middle-income countries, which suffer 90 per cent of the 1.3 million annual deaths and 50 million serious injuries that arise from road crashes.

Strategy of the Global Road Safety Partnership

The strategy has the following key elements:

Increasing our activities and becoming "Partner and Deliverer of Choice" for global good practice road safety investments aimed at implementing the UN Resolution 64/255 "Improving Global Road Safety"
Promoting alignment and collaboration for a "Decade of Action" on road safety
Leveraging our activity through strategic partnerships with large global organisations, and in particular the Red Cross & Red Crescent movement
Creating and supporting road safety partnerships between business, government and civil society at regional, national, provincial or city level
Delivering and facilitating evidence-based road safety interventions on UN and World Report key themes of helmets, seat belts, drink driving, speed, fleet safety, vulnerable road users
Demonstrating our success through consistent metrics of our "outputs" and "outcomes"
Creating professional and institutional road safety capacity where we operate
Adding to freely available global road safety knowledge
Securing increased funding and extending the time we are funded for

Mission of Global Road Safety Partnership South Africa / GRSP ZA

South Africa has one of the worst road safety records in the world. Over the last 10 years more than 120 000 people were killed and more than a million injured in road traffic crashes in South Africa. The economic impact of road crashes in South Africa for 2005 is estimated at R43-billion.

While government has the responsibility to develop and implement strategies aimed at improving road safety, it is broadly recognized that road safety is a shared responsibility and the private sector, associations and other non-governmental entities have a vital role to play.

Mission Statement

To promote and encourage road safety in all its aspects
To participate in and support existing roads safety initiatives
To establish, create and implement GRSP SA initiatives
To involve those who wish to support the GRSP SA initiatives
To use and implement, where practically feasible, international and national best practice
To place the name of the GRSP SA clearly in public view in all our initiatives

Responsibility of Members of the GRSP ZA

The members of the GRSP ZA will contribute to the achievement of the mission of the GRSP ZA by Actively supporting and participating in implementation of identified projects.

Responsibilities of the GRSP ZA

The GRSP SA will provide partners with:

Coordination of the road safety projects and coordination of related public relations activities
Publication of an annual report on activities
Proactive communication with media and government
Regular updates on road safety strategies, priorities and programmes

Third Africa Road Safety Summit hosted by the Global Road Safety Partnership in Cape Town 12-13 August 2014 - Safer Cities for Africa's Children

Visit the section Arrive Alive downloads and presentations to find more information on how the GRSP is working in Africa to make our children safer on the roads

Also visit the following sections:

Global Road Safety Partnership

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