Baku to host seminar on road safety
A seminar on road safety will be held in the Marriott Hotel in Baku on Wednesday, the Netherlands Embassy in Baku reported on Tuesday.
The event is organized in co-operation with the Asian Development Bank and the Azerbaijani Ministry of Transport, and will be opened jointly by the Netherlands Ambassador in Baku, Arjen Uijterlinde and Deputy Minister of Transport, Musa Panahov.
The objective of the seminar is to bring together policy makers, experts and interested business partners to share best practices and discuss effective strategies to improve road safety.
According to the recently published Global Status Report on Road Safety of WHO, about 1,25 million people die each year on the world's roads and between 20 and 50 million sustain non-fatal injuries.
In Azerbaijan, although the number of traffic accidents has been decreasing, still more than 1000 people died last year in road accidents. The number of cars in Baku is growing. The Ministry of Transport recently announced its action plan on resolving traffic problems in Baku in 2013-2015.
In Europe, as a whole, the number of fatal accidents decreased 9% in 2011. The European program for 2011-2020 sets out challenging plans to reduce the number of road deaths on Europe's roads by half in the next 10 years. It contains ambitious proposals focusing on making improvements to vehicles, infrastructure and road users' behaviour. National enforcement plans submitted by EU member states will provide a rich source of best practices.
The Netherlands, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, consistently ranks in the top 3 of the world's safest countries in traffic casualty statistics.