On a recent evening, a busy thoroughfare in Stockholm’s Central Station boasted a unique exhibition: a huge pile of 3,700 pairs of old shoes and two crashed vehicles. It wasn’t an edgy installation by an up-and-coming emerging artist. It was a memorial to the 3,700 lives lost every day in traffic crashes around the world.
The empty shoes are “powerful, visual, symbolic representations of statistics which are so often abstract and impersonal,” Rochelle Sobel told Forbes, intended “to convey the enormity of the issue and its daily toll.” Ms. Sobel is founder of the Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT). Her son Aron died in a bus crash in Turkey in 1995. He was a twenty five year old medical student completing his final rotation by volunteering in a hospital abroad.
An installation in Stockholm’s Central Station is a memorial to the 3,700 people who die every day … [+]
The temporary exhibition, designed to show the human side of the global road safety epidemic that every year kills about 1.35 million people and severely injures some 50 million more, was organized by the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety, a nonprofit, which represents more than 240 member NGOs working in road safety (including ASIRT) from more than 90 countries.
The installation opened for several days to coincide with the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Stockholm from February 19-20, organized by the Swedish Government and the World Health Organization. Hundreds of government officials and road safety groups and experts gathered from about 140 countries. The exhibition’s goal was to highlight the “dangerous, urgent and preventable consequences of inaction on road safety around the world and to call on world leaders to take action,” the Global Alliance said.
The two crashed cars at the exhibit, from the same manufacturer but destined for different regions of the world, demonstrated the danger faced by citizens in countries with lower vehicle safety standards. The display was arranged in collaboration with the Global New Car Assessment Program (Global NCAP), a nonprofit based in London that serves as an umbrella organization for new-car assessment programs globally that offer consumers information about the safety levels for models sold in their markets.
In the first test of its kind, Global NCAP crashed one of the best-selling pickup models in Africa, the 2019 Nissan NP300 Hardbody, into a second-hand Nissan Navara NP300 manufactured in Europe in 2015. The car-to-car crash test graphically demonstrated the inequities currently applied by Nissan and other car makers to vehicle safety in Africa.
Two crashed cars by the same manufacturer but destined for different regions in the world, … [+]
“The difference in safety performance between the new African model and the second-hand European version is a matter of life and death,” the group reported, noting that the driver in the African Nissan would have likely sustained fatal injuries, but the driver of the equivalent European model would have probably walked away from the crash.The European car was fitted with Electronic Stability Control (ESC), a life saving crash avoidance anti-skid system, but the new African version was not.
“It is misleading, dishonest and an unacceptable double standard” said David Ward, Global NCAP’s president and chief executive, addressing a group of journalists in advance of the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference. “Major brands should know better. Nowhere in Africa are the United Nations minimum standards applied,” he said. “Africa has the most dangerous road network in the world.” (The United States currently only requires six of the eight recommended U.N. vehicle standards; in the European Union, all eight are mandatory.)
“It’s completely false to think that regulations will result in huge costs,” Mr. Ward added. And “we can’t expect the private sector to do it on its own.”
To coincide with the international conference, the Global Alliance released its new report: “The Day Our World Crumbled: The Human Cost of Inaction on Road Safety” based on a survey of 5,606 people from 132 countries that combines statistical analysis with personal stories. The report details the impact road collisions have on the everyday lives of crash victims, their families, and the wider community. Crashes often lead to a series of negative outcomes that can change the course of a victim and their family’s lives. Those without formal education, for example, are more sharply affected, reported a higher frequency of losing jobs or income, of staying home to care for an injured victim, and of incurring a disability. They and their children are also more likely to abandon school. “Road crashes,” the report stated, “therefore, are perpetuating social inequality,”
Some highlights from the report:
Road crashes can affect income and education:
- 24% of respondents stayed out of work to care for a crash victim
- 15.5% reported that they or their children had to abandon school
- 11% of crash survivors lost their job or source of income
Those with lower educational levels, often corresponding to lower income, are the most affected:
- 71% of crash survivors who had not completed formal schooling lost their job / source of income versus 10% of university-educated respondents
- 73% of crash survivors reported living with a disability caused by a crash versus 6% of university-educated respondents
The emotional impacts affect people’s daily lives:
- 66% live in fear that they or their loved ones might be in a crash again
- 47% had avoided places, things, or people associated with a crash
- 43% reported experiencing depression, hopelessness, anger, nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks, sleep disturbance, and/or poor concentration
“The report brings forth the voices of real people who testify to the disastrous long-lasting consequences that crashes cause: the never-ending pain, grief, loss, and fear of losing family members, the difficulties of living with the impacts of a crash, and the anger that these deaths and injuries could have been prevented,” Lotte Brondum, executive director of the Global Alliance, said in a statement. “Our leaders must show that they hear and understand what is happening on the streets in their countries and value their citizens’ lives by taking action now.”
Many deaths could be prevented if governments implemented the policies, enforcement, road and vehicle standards, and post-crash care recommended by the W. H.O., the group said.
“Many of us brought the shoes of our loved ones to Stockholm to place them on the pile during the ceremony,” said Ms. Sobel, the chair of the Global Alliance’s board of directors. At the exhibition’s opening, she read a poem she composed as she placed her son Aron’s shoes with the others:
With aching hearts, we place our loved one’s shoes upon the pile
And watch them tumble as they find their place among the others.
Shoes of young and old commingle, shoes of many countries and countless broken
dreams…
Shoes that once walked or danced or skipped or raced or played or shuffled slowly
Cruelly stilled in a single moment, on a single road
Now inert, unmoving, frozen in time.
Shoes that took first steps , or trudged to school, or rushed to catch a ball, or marched
down aisles in triumph, or faltered, heavy with the weight of years.
Shoes that leaped to catch tomorrow on its wing, or simply pedaled to complete their
daily chores.
These shoes are our sacred monuments to what was and will never be again.
With resolute hearts , we place our loved one’s shoes upon the pile
And repeat the vow we made to them and to ourselves;
We will never rest, nor will we be silent
For these shoes are our sacred promise that the time will soon come
When all shoes will bear the precious weight of loved ones
Returning safely home.
Click here to read the full report, here to learn more about the Global Alliance, and here for more about Global NCAP.
