As the 8th UN Global Road Safety Week kicks off around the world under the theme “Make walking and cycling safe,” the World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a new toolkit to help governments promote active mobility – by making it safer.
Road traffic crashes result in the deaths of approximately 1.19 million people around the world each year and leave between 20 and 50 million people with non-fatal injuries. More than half of all road traffic deaths occur among vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.
The 8th UN Global Road Safety Week will take place from May 12 to 18, 2025. The UN Road Safety Strategy was launched in 2019, with the objective of reducing the number of fatalities due to road traffic crashes by 50 percent by 2030.
According to the UN Report, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Estonia are the top three countries with the safest roads.
A recent report by the World Economic Forum has ranked the top 10 countries with the best roads in the world, based on factors like road infrastructure, network quality, and surface condition. Leading the pack is the United Arab Emirates with a road quality score of 6.4.
WHO joins hands with hundreds of organizations and governments worldwide to demand urgent action on road safety this week. The Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety is mobilizing over 400 member organizations in 100 countries to support the campaign.
Each year, nearly 1.2 million people lose their lives on the roads, more than a quarter of them while walking or cycling, said the WHO press release adding, “Yet, only 0.2% of the roads worldwide are equipped with cycle lanes, and far too many communities lack basics like sidewalks or safe pedestrian crossings.”
“Walking and cycling improve health and make cities more sustainable. Every step and every ride helps to cut congestion, air pollution and disease,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“But we must make walking and cycling safe, so more people choose these healthier, greener options,” he added.
Despite their benefits, fewer than one-third of countries have national policies to promote walking and cycling. WHO’s new toolkit aims to fill that gap with practical, evidence-based guidance for policymakers, urban planners, health advocates and civil society.
The toolkit calls for bold action including integrating walking and cycling; building safe infrastructure; setting and enforcing safer speed limits; promoting safe road use and using financial incentives to encourage active mobility.
While global pedestrian deaths dropped slightly and cyclist deaths plateaued between 2011 and 2021.
The WHO data of regional trends show growing danger as South-East Asia Regional pedestrian deaths rose by 42% while in Europe cyclist deaths surged by 50% and in the Western Pacific Region, cyclist deaths soared by 88%.
Shortening lives by decades
Meanwhile, a global report published by the WHO highlights that the underlying causes of ill health often stem from factors beyond the health sector, such as lack of quality housing, education and job opportunities.
The new World report on social determinants of health equity shows that such determinants can be responsible for a dramatic reduction of healthy life expectancy – sometimes by decades – in high- and low-income countries alike.
For example, people in the country with the lowest life expectancy will, on average, live 33 years shorter than those born in the country with the highest life expectancy. The social determinants of health equity can influence people’s health outcomes more than genetic influences or access to health
“Our world is an unequal one. Where we are born, grow, live, work and age significantly influences our health and well-being, but change for the better is possible” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The report underscores that inequities in health are closely linked to degrees of social disadvantage and levels of discrimination.
The World report on social determinants of health equity is the first of its kind published since 2008 when the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health released its final report laying out targets for 2040 for reducing gaps between and within countries in life expectancy, childhood and maternal mortality. The 2025 world report, shows that these targets are likely to be missed.
Although data is scarce, there is sufficient evidence to show that health inequities within countries are often widening. WHO data cites that children born in poorer countries are 13 times more likely to die before the age of 5 than in wealthier countries.
Modelling shows that the lives of 1.8 million children annually could be saved by closing the gap and enhancing equity between the poorest and wealthiest sectors of the population within low- and-middle-income countries.
The report shows that while there was a 40% decline in maternal mortality globally between 2000 and 2023, low- and lower-middle-income countries still account for 94% of maternal deaths.
Women from disadvantaged groups are more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes. In many high-income countries, racial and ethnic inequities in maternal death rates persist.
Climate change is estimated to push an additional 68–135 million people into extreme poverty over the next 5 years.
Currently, 3.8 billion people worldwide are deprived of adequate social protection coverage, such as child/paid sick leave benefits, with direct and lasting impact on their health outcomes.
WHO calls for collective action from national and local governments and leaders to address economic inequality and invest in social infrastructure and universal public services; overcome structural discrimination and the determinants and impacts of conflicts, emergencies and forced migration; manage the challenges and opportunities of climate action and the digital transformation to promote health equity co-benefits; and promote governance arrangements that prioritize action on the social determinants of health equity, including maintaining cross-government policy platforms and strategies, allocating money, power and resources to the most local level where it can have greatest impact, and empowering community engagement and civil society.
