Two thousand four hundred and twenty-two days before the end of the second decade of action on road safety set by the United Nations, which culminates in 2030, in Mexico, 43 Mexicans continue to die each day due to accidents on streets and highways, stated the specialists from the Aleatica Foundation.
This Wednesday, Aleatica presented the Road Safety Monitor, a snapshot of the situation in Mexico regarding road safety goals towards 2030, which aim to reduce fatalities and serious injuries by 50% by that year. The monitor revealed that these incidents are on the rise in the country.
In this regard, Arturo Cervantes, president of the National Alliance for Road Safety, emphasized that this document is an effort intended to provide updated data every year to guide the measures that must be taken to reduce accidents.
“Mexico needs continuous measurement to make adjustments along the way, especially Mexico needs this monitoring to be updated. We have six years, seven months, and 17 days left to cut in half, which is quite a challenge. That’s why I celebrate this Monitor because road safety is the most important issue of public health and development in our country,” said Cervantes.
Rodrigo Rosas, an expert in road safety, indicated that Mexico is moving away from its goals; in 2022, there was an 8.4% increase in deaths compared to the previous year, a 9% increase in injuries, and a 10.1% increase in traffic accidents.
He explained that according to the United Nations report, 1.9 million people lose their lives due to traffic accidents worldwide, and the situation does not improve when the figures are examined in Mexico. According to the Monitor, there were 15,674 deaths in 2022 due to these accidents.
Additionally, on average, every year 100,000 people suffer minor injuries, and 33,500 suffer serious injuries as a result of around 370,000 traffic incidents.
Rosas emphasized that seven out of ten people who die in a traffic accident were not inside a four-wheeled vehicle but were walking, cycling, or using a motorcycle as a means of transportation.
Regarding the mortality rate, in Mexico, there are 12 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, up to six times higher than countries like the United Kingdom or Norway, more than double that of Australia or Italy, or three times higher than Spain.
The document indicates that 50% of all accidents occur in seven federative entities: Nuevo León, Sonora, Chihuahua, State of Mexico, Michoacán, Guanajuato, and Tamaulipas.
“It is something very important that has to do with the goals towards 2030 and how we have to see road safety. Usually, as we used to see it before, it was said that the users themselves were responsible. Human errors will continue, which will translate into traffic accidents, and we must insist that the road system be designed to go hand in hand with adequate legislation, good training and education, and the issuance of licenses and control of risk factors because what we have to avoid are serious injuries and deaths on our streets and highways, and this is a shared responsibility,” said Rodrigo Rosas.
He emphasized that greater attention and action must be placed on the issue of motorcycles, as from 2015 to 2022, the number of deaths in this mode of transportation increased by 98.5%, and the number of serious injuries increased by 106%.
In conclusion, the specialists indicated that if this trend continues, by 2030 there would be 25,434 deaths from these incidents, which, compared to the 6,708 that are targeted, would represent a deviation of 279%.
“The Road Safety Monitor reflects alarming figures that show a setback in our country in terms of safety. This monitor is a reflection of our reality, providing a precise snapshot and representing the essential data that should guide our actions and measure our progress towards 2030,” said Bosco Martí Ascencio, president of the Aleatica Foundation.
It is worth remembering that in the first period of action set by the United Nations, which was 2011-2020, Mexico did not achieve its goals.
Despite this, Cervantes highlighted that in the last three years, great achievements have been made in terms of road safety, such as the recognition of the right to mobility in conditions of road safety in the fourth constitutional article from 2021 onwards, as well as the creation of the General Law of Mobility and Road Safety in 2022, which highlights in articles 78 to 82 the importance of creating citizen observatories involving the private sector, academia, civil society, and federal, state, and local governments to monitor the situation.
“We are all working together to improve mobility conditions in the country. We are harmonizing state and municipal laws on road safety with federal regulations; we are working with Sedatu (Secretariat of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development) on the urban public transport national policy project; there are already official road design standards, an entire foundation has been created for Mexico to achieve its objectives,” he said.
Likewise, he emphasized that there are important challenges ahead that will require collaboration and strategies from all actors.
Bosco Martí Ascencio indicated that Aleatica Foundation is making efforts to train first responders in road safety, with over 500 police officers and members of the national guard in the states of Mexico, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, and Puebla being trained.
“We continuously work to unite efforts, knowledge, and actions to be catalysts for cultural change,” Martí Ascencio assured.
Comment and follow us on X: : @jenna_GH_ / @GrupoT21
