Today, FIA President and Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General for Road Safety Jean Todt participated in the New York launch event of the UN Road Safety Week. The event brought together Anthony Lake, Executive Director of UNICEF, Polly Trottenberg, Commissioner of New York City Department of Transportation, Etienne Krug, Director of the Department for the Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Violence and Injury Prevention at WHO, FIA Foundation Director General Saul Billingsley, Global Road Safety Ambassadors Michelle Yeoh and Zoleka Mandela.

Jean Todt, FIA President and Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General for Road Safety said: “Thank you all for supporting the UN Road Safety Week and the Save Kids Lives campaign. Every single day more than 500 children are killed. Children are the most vulnerable in our society. Their protection must be our number one priority. In our Child Declaration for Road Safety, we call for new commitments to keep children safe around the world.

“Every child should have the right to a safe journey whether travelling to school, home or anywhere else. Today we urge all governments to take new action and keep children safe.”

At this occasion, participants received from New York schoolchildren the ‘Child Declaration for Road Safety’. The event also featured a flash mob of local schools' students, who danced and sang to encourage the crowd to support the campaign and take "safies".

Developed with input from children around the world who voiced their fears about travelling on our roads, the Child Declaration calls upon decision-makers worldwide to take action and protect children. t spells out some of the simple measures that can prevent deaths and injuries on the road, such as the use of seatbelts, the wearing of cycle and motorcycle helmets and the prevention of speeding and drink driving. The declaration also calls for leaders around the world to take immediate action to make sure that all children can travel in safety.

Everywhere in the world, thousands of children, parents, teachers, and policy makers are signing it, sharing it on social media and delivering to the authorities, as part of the #SaveKidsLives campaign. Each day, more than 500 children and adolescents under the age of 19 lose their lives on roads worldwide. Many of them killed on their way to or from school. For every child that a dies another is permanently disabled and 10 more are seriously injured. The initiative was part of ‘#SaveKidsLives’, a worldwide campaign for road safety for children: www.savekidslives2015.org