Photo Caption: An FIA and IDB delegation including FIA President Jean Todt and IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno met with Dominican Republic Danilo Medina

The third annual joint meeting of the FIA and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on road safety was held on 8 August 2014, in Santo Domingo (the Dominican Republic), with the participation of FIA President Jean Todt, IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno and the Dominican Republic Minister for the Economy Temístocles Montás. 

The event, ‘Paving the Way for Road Safety’, also brought together Senior Transport Specialist at the World Bank, Veronica Raffo, and President of the Ibero-American Road Safety Observatory (OISEVI), Felipe Rodriguez.

Partners welcomed steps taken by the Dominican Republic government to work on the development and implementation of a National Road Safety Plan together with the IDB, as well as on-going work at a regional level on the collection of road safety data through cooperation with the Ibero-American Road Safety Observatory OISEVI.

A call for an ambitious road safety target to be included as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals post-2015 was supported and members of the public were encouraged to vote for ‘Better Roads and Transport’ in the UN MyWorld 2015 survey which will be used by leaders when deciding priorities to replace the Millennium Development Goals. Vote here http://walksafe.myworld2015.org.

The FIA and IDB announced at the event the launch of a joint road safety competition together with MTV. “Project Yellow Light” is a contest that invites young people aged between eighteen and thirty throughout Latin America and the Caribbean to create a video that encourages people to drive safely:http://iadb.sparkreel.com/.  Participants also signed a joint pledge for road users to respect others on the road and drive responsibly, based on the FIA’s Golden Rules for Safer Driving.

FIA President Jean Todt and IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno met with the President of the Dominican Republic Danilo Medina after the event where a new national road safety strategy for the Dominican Republic was formally announced. A target has been set to reduce fatalities on the road by 30% by 2016 and by 50% by 2020, with funding for implementation of the strategy to be provided by the IDB.

This is the third year the IDB and FIA have organised this initiative. In 2012, the event was organised in Sao Paulo and resulted in Brazilian President Dilma agreeing to speak on the global road safety crisis at the UN General Assembly – the first time a Head of State has done so. Building on that success, last year the event was held in Buenos Aires with the support of the Argentinian government and focused on lessons learnt from that country’s achievement in reducing fatalities by more than 20% over recent years.