A global campaign

Fighting for road safety on the international stage

The FIA's Action for Road Safety is a global campaign, focusing the federation's resources on helping its member organisations around the globe to educate and advocate for safer roads, vehicles and behaviours.

The FIA's Action for Road Safety is a global campaign, focusing the federation's resources on helping its member organisations around the globe to educate and advocate for safer roads, vehicles and behaviours. The FIA has a long and distinguished history in promoting road safety. For many years the Federation has lobbied for improved legislation, infrastructure and vehicle safety technologies on an international scale.

The FIA has a long history in road safety

With the development of the automobile came the creation of motoring clubs. The oldest of these clubs – some of which go back more than 100 years – were largely formed in the interests of improving the safety of their members’ automotive passions. Due to the proliferation of the automobile over the course of the 20th century, clubs diversified their interests to include other motoring services, yet it is evident that from beginning, safety has and continues to be one of the central concerns of the FIA.

FIA Mobility Clubs are leading advocates of road safety improvement in their respective countries and are a powerful constituency representing some 80 million motorists. In addition to implementing their own activities, they have an important role to play towards national and local government, as well as other stakeholders.

Road safety and motor sport safety

The FIA considers the safety of everyone involved in motor sport – from those at the grass roots level to the pinnacle of Formula 1, as well as drivers to spectators – as its most important priority. This has led the FIA to create safe standards for everything from the engineering of circuits, to the cars and the drivers’ equipment. Speed limits are even imposed where necessary, effectively suspending competition for safety purposes. Further to this, the FIA sets standards for race direction, emergency medical care as well as event management. Additionally, the FIA conducts research and development into all aspects of motor sport safety. This accumulated expertise is shared with the national sporting authorities, and the FIA works with its worldwide network of National Sporting Authorities (ASNs) to apply the most appropriate and cost effective solutions to suit each region’s particular safety issues. While there will always be an element of risk on any road, the FIA continues towards its goal of zero fatalities and injuries in motor sport.

The UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 

The global road safety community had one of its most important successes when the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 was first launched in 2011, with over 100 governments signing up to its ambitious goals. Based on a UN resolution, it aims to stabilise and reduce fatalities around the world by 2020 through increasing awareness and action at the national, regional and global levels. If successful, it is estimated 5 million lives can be saved.

The UN has promotes the Safe System Approach to structure road safety actions, based on five pillars:

1/ Capacity building

2/ Safe drivers

3/ Safer vehicles

4/ Safe infrastructure

5/ Post-crash interventions

The UN Decade of Action for Road Safety is supported by the FIA as well as numerous organisations such as the World Health Organisation, the World Bank, the European Union, international institutions, NGOs and the private sector to make our roads safer.

To read more about how the FIA's campaign work is covering all five pillars of the Safe System Approach, click here.