An estimated $1.7 trillion is lost yearly from fatal road accidents covering 1.3 million victims of road crashes, 90 percent of them from developing countries. A World Bank blog said in the Philippines—despite mobility restrictions from the pandemic—8,262 died from road accidents from January to November 2021.
A World Bank blog estimates the cost of fatal road crashes yearly at $1.7 trillion covering the deaths of 1.35 million people, 90 percent of them in developing countries.
This is about 6 percent of the gross domestic product of lower to middle income economies like the Philippines.
The blog written by Daniel Pulido, senior investment officer of the International Finance Corp. Global Infrastructure Development and Veronica Raffo, senior infrastructure specialist of World Bank said “the costs of these preventable fatalities do not end at the roadside; they create ripple effects throughout the wider economy.
“Loss of income, property damage, insurance premiums, loss of taxes, and burdens on the health sector are just some of the far-reaching costs associated with road traffic crashes,” they asserted.
“Ultimately, these costs are mostly borne by victims’ households, and can trap them in poverty. More needs to be done, on a global level, to prevent road crashes and make transport safer,” they added.
Underfunded
Historically, the authors said, road safety initiatives have been underfunded mainly due to the market’s failure to account for the costs of road crashes. Given this, there was little incentive to prioritize road safety.
They cited a recent report from the World Bank showing that funding gap in road safety could be addressed by private investments. Recently, the International Road Assessment Program (iRAP) and the FIA High Level Panel for Road Safety, have been working together to identify the business models to make this happen, Business Mirror reported.
These collaborations have identified five business models consisting of subnational, public-private partnerships (PPPs) and corporate investments that can leverage the growing sustainable finance market, including social and sustainability-linked financing (SLF).
Business models
These models, the authors said, can be used to incentivize borrowers to commit to road safety as part of SLFs. Road safety efforts can be weaved into a company’s sustainability strategies and performance targets.
Road safety efforts can be assured of financing by including these in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impact reporting done by investors and companies as well as companies’ efforts to financing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In September 2020, the international community, including the UN General Assembly and the World Health Organization, affirmed the commitment to halving road deaths by 2030 through a Second Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030.
2021 road accidents in the Philippines
In the Philippines, despite mobility restrictions imposed by the government, transport accidents remained the 16th top cause of death between January and November 2021, with 8,262 Filipinos dying from accidents in this period. This was 6.55 percent higher than the 7,754 Filipinos killed in the same period of 2020.
In the January to November 2021 period, a total of 704,202 Filipinos died of various causes. This represented a 25.7-percent increase from the 560,205 Filipinos who died in the same period in 2020.
Tags: #WBblog, #roadcrashes, #1.3Mpeoplelosttheirlives, #iunderfundedroadsafetyinitiatives, #transport