Car and bus crashes claim as many lives as malaria or tuberculosis.

Urgent steps need to be taken to deal with what is becoming a public health problem. That’s the message from Moscow at the first ever Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety. President Dmitry Medvedev spoke of his shock at road accident statistics. He stressed that as much attention should be paid to this as overcoming the financial crisis. Advocates are pushing the United Nations to label the next 10 years a U.N ‘decade of action’ on road safety. They are urging developing countries to do much more to acknowledge the issue. Drunk driving can often to be to blame as well as speeding and dangerous roads. The conference highlighted that if road accidents were a disease, it would be at the top of the international agenda. This recent french advertisement has been released to try and raise awareness.More about: Road safety, Russia

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