Second CAREC Road Safety Workshop

Delegates from 11 countries of Central and West Asia were joined by development partners to complete a regional road safety strategy designed to reduce by half the region’s fatalities by half by 2030.

The workshop was chaired by Pakistan, and organized by Asian Development Bank and the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research.

The objectives of the workshop were to

• facilitate discussions and inputs on the actions required by each country to deliver the CAREC road safety strategy;
• discuss and agree on region-wide and national level actions, priorities and timelines for each pillar of the strategy;
• discuss and agree on targets for the strategy taking into consideration targets at the global level (Sustainable Development Goals, UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020) and targets at the national level in CAREC member countries;
• discuss the monitoring framework required, including performance indicators, to adequately monitor actions and outcomes of the strategy;
• provide an opportunity for member countries to share available road safety and transport data for selected CAREC road corridors that will provide insight into the characteristics of crashes occurring, and act as a baseline for monitoring outcomes of the strategy; and
• share specific examples of good road safety practice from countries within the region across the five pillars of the strategy, together with examples of international good practice.

The main outputs from the workshop were agreed strategy targets, and an agreed action plan that specifies regional and national actions, priorities and timelines for each pillar of the road safety strategy.

The 14th CAREC Ministerial Conference endorsed a joint commitment to road safety in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

This was to take collective action to improve road safety by adopting a “safe systems” approach. This involves reducing road crash death and injury by adopting international good practice in road safety and building on existing efforts for safer road infrastructure, safer vehicles, and safer road users.

Related link

• Commitment to Road Safety in CAREC: 10 Actions to Make CAREC Corridors Safer