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Global action urged to stop road deaths

Western governments have been urged by the Commission for Global Road Safety to increase the amount of aid for reducing road accidents around the world.

At the release of a new report, Make Roads Safe , the commission described the problem - which kills 1.2m people a year - as a 'global epidemic', on a par with malaria and tuberculosis. The report will be presented to world leaders ahead of the G8 summit in St Petersburg in July.

The Commission's chairman, former Nato chief Lord Robertson (pictured above), said global road safety needed to be on the agenda at future G8 summits. "In 2005, millions of people and the leaders of the G8 responded to the call to Make Poverty History. Yet many of the gains for development...will be at risk if action is not taken to reverse the growing epidemic of road traffic death and injury, with its terrible human and economic cost," he said.

Lord Robertson said 'political leadership' from G8 members and a 'significant increase in resources' were needed to make roads safer.

Formula One driver Michael Schumacher, a member of the Commission, has given his backing to improved road safety. "We need to make people aware of the real human cost of road traffic injuries across the developing world. 500 children are dying every day and thousands more are being disabled or injured," he said.

The report says more young men die on the roads than have died in recent wars - and only HIV and Aids take more lives.

For the full story go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk