‘Business as usual is a business of death’: UN adopts road safety pledge over US objection

The UN General Assembly closed its first ever High-level Meeting on road safety on Tuesday by adopting a sweeping new declaration aimed at halving road deaths by 2030 – over the sole objection of the United States.

The Progress Declaration passed by a recorded vote of 162 in favour to one against, with no abstentions. 

It commits governments to strengthen national road safety systems, upgrade vehicle and infrastructure standards, and adopt the ‘Safe System’ approach, which designs roads and vehicles to survive the mistakes drivers inevitably make.

The US representative accused the declaration of “mandate creep that has eroded the credibility of this institution,” objecting to provisions linking road safety with climate and environmental policy.

“Road safety is a practical matter of engineering, sober driving and personal responsibility,” he said. It “should not be used as a backdoor vehicle to enforce global climate pacts and top-down environmental restrictions on freedom of mobility.”

Other countries backed the declaration while marking their own reservations. 

Argentina stressed its sovereign right to implement it according to national law, while separately reserving its position on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) role. Paraguay underlined that the follow-up process, like the declaration itself, is voluntary and non-binding.

‘More than the number killed in direct conflict’

Opening the meeting, General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock addressed the question she said many people ask: why does the UN spend its time on road safety when wars and crises dominate the agenda?

The answer, she said, is scale. Road crashes kill more than 1.2 million people a year and injure some 50 million more – more, she noted, than are killed in direct conflict, murdered, or die of malaria.

“Since I began speaking,” she told delegates, several more families had already received news that would change their lives forever.