Mr. Jean Todt, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety is actively supporting the EuroMed Transport Support Project.
His full statement follows: “Dear friends, I express my support to the EU funded EuroMed Transport Support Project’s efforts to assist South Mediterranean Countries in setting up reliable, harmonized and comparable road safety data collection systems. In addition, to share their data at regional level. This is of major importance, as reliable road crash data are key to identifying risks, developing strategies and interventions to address those risks. Reliable data is also of paramount to evaluating impact and an indispensable tool for political decisions. However, the collection of credible data, is a major issue in the EuroMed region as in other parts of the world. The interest expressed by the global community in developing Road Safety Observatories in the Mediterranean is an important recent initiative, that could build on the results of this activity. Therefore, I encourage the EuroMed Partner Countries to cooperate within the EuroMed Transport Support Project”.
The EuroMed Transport Support Project implements a specific Activity. which consists of provision of TA on setting up road safety reliable, harmonized and comparable data collection system to EuroMed Partner Countries and sharing at regional level. Among the major objectives of this Activity would be to identify the methods of road safety data collection in the concerned Partner Countries (diagnosis); report on the existing best practices, methods and tools at national, European and international, including those of the European Road Safety Observatory (ERSO), the Community Road Accident Database (CARE), WHO, International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) of ITF-OECD, UNECE and UN SafeFits project; understand the differences of the gaps between WHO and national statistics of the concerned EuroMed Partner Countries and bridge them; while at the same time promote collection and processing of harmonized, credible and comparable road safety data in the region. In this regard, close cooperation with the national road safety statistical services and WHO, ERSO, CARE, IRTAD and UNECE is required and already being established.