Celebrating 10 years of EASST
In 2009 EASST was first established with the aim of making road travel safer, greener and more sustainable for future generations.
Road crashes are the leading cause of death for young people in every world region, and globally account for more fatalities than diseases such as malaria. Air pollution is also a serious concern leading to millions of premature deaths every year, a consequence of heavy congestion and a reliance on motorised transport.
As well as saving lives, safe roads have a vital role to play in economic development, allowing the safe movement of people and vehicles required for investments, trade, and tourism thereby providing a better quality of life.
Through a vibrant network of local road safety NGOs we concentrate our efforts in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia where road deaths are particularly high and vehicle fleets are growing. These factors together pose an increasingly unbearable burden on health and social services, while unsafe road transport is inhibiting both economic and social development.
In support of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020, over the last 10 years, we have we have focused our efforts across this region, growing our network from five to fourteen countries, implementing hundreds of projects, and contributing to significant reforms, which have saved thousands of lives.
Throughout this year, we will be celebrating (and building upon) these achievements with a programme of events and projects starting the with the release of our 10 year impact video and report in April at the 6th biennial meeting of the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety in Chania, Crete.
Looking to the future, we will continue to push on a global, regional and national level for road safety to be a policy priority matched by effective actions and look forward to the next Global Ministerial meeting on road safety in Sweden in 2020 where there will be a review of progress and – we hope – a renewed target for cutting road deaths by 2030.
