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Vassiliki Danelli-Mylona’s speech for the UN Global Road Safety Week

 

Scouting for Global Road Safety Workshop

 

 

Dear Scouts, dear Friends,

 

I feel honored and challenged to address you in this meeting, this event which I believe is of historical importance and I will explain you why:

 

1. First reason is that road traffic crashes comprise first cause of deaths for youth ages (15-29, 5-14, 30-44) are mostly affected in a number of 1,24 million road users fatally injured each year. This is something not widely known but the figures are screaming according to the WHO World Status report. 

 

2. Scouts is the largest youth Organization on the globe with a history of 106 Years and continuously growing with an immense power in changing the society promoting what is best in human behavior for good citizenship and leadership. It is important and timely that scouting should take a stand to help safeguard road safety. You are also a uniquely global movement.

 

3.  We are today opening an event in Palais des Nations, a place where decision makers of all nations of the world can judge and guide the future of the peoples. 

 

 

This is your chance to make a real input to these decisions!

 

We are called here to discuss today and decide what will be the future of young people being killed on the roads; I strongly believe in this - Scouting is most effective in promoting what is best in human behavior, a well organized and disciplined youth power and with our team here, with my fellow colleagues, we are entirely committed to do our best in the direction of changing the facts that make road deaths a cause for young people getting killed or disabled on the roads. Together we can make the roads safer, we can save lives! The Scouts, the Road Safety Authorities all those who have experienced the loss or the suffering of those disabled. 

 

In every country there are pictures on the roads that we don't like to see, let's change them. Let us not close our eyes but fight against the massacre on the roads, fight for life and freedom - WHO defines health as the mental, physical and social well being of humans and not only the lack of disease or injury. This should guide us to act for health, freedom, sustainability. 

 

In the next hours we will be given the chance to work together to deeply understand and get actively involved in this challenge to change the world into a safer place for the young, for humanity. 

We have the opportunity for experiential learning on the causes of traffic crashes such as speeding, drink driving, distracted driving, non wearing of belt and helmets.

 

From our road safety referral center, the European Union AVENUE project mobile NEST, we have transported this equipment to provide the opportunity to know (at a glance) or through a short demonstration, how fragile human life can be but how strongly we can protect human life and "PREVENT".

 

Ancients Greeks said: preventing is better than curing and it is indeed. Not only because protecting life is important for the family and the society but also since in a period of deep economic crisis there is a huge impact on the development on the planet. The costs of road crashes represent an amount equal to 2 to 5 % of GDP …and even more.. How can you value life in terms of numbers!

 

We measure the number of deaths and serious injuries we list the figures but how come many can really feel that behind these figures there is unmeasurable pain and consequences?, Dreams that were not fulfilled, lives ruined - only those who bear the loss can truly feel how great this loss is, for those we miss throughout our own lifetime, our life that can change in a moment...

 

Let's change this: we have an immense challenge and immense power if we act together, we are the world, we are the people. We are the users of the road, everyday - either walking or commuting, driving, cycling, being carried by others on a private car or in public transport. Road safety is a responsibility for all and a human right we need to claim for by our fellow citizens, by our governments, by all those who share the roads with us. 

 

3 years ago when I talked first about road safety to my old friend and colleague John Lawlor as a right and responsibility for all I learned he was a scout: when I got to know more about scouting and its principles and the strength of the movement.I was convinced that this was a great way to addess the challenge. Since then we have worked together in the Greek Road Safety Institute (RSI Panos Mylonas) and Scouting and we have achieved a lot with minimal resources. We did training during the Greek Jamboree 2010, with our National Scout Organisation and with regional groups in the centers, the Irish scouts and then in the GDV in Sweden with SI and Scouts of Greece we cooperated and worked with more than 3.500 scouts in the Global Development Village at the 22th WSJamboree in Sweden. 

 

WP1 of the Transport Committee in UNECE, Mrs Eva Molnar and Mr Michalis Adamantiadis embraced and believed in our idea and the United Nations resolution followed to include our developed then project "Scouting for Global Road Safety" in the UN decade for action (United Nations Decade of action for road safety). As Colm Cavanagh said we are today here taking the first step to plant the seed in order to cultivate the further development of our project’s planning and acting and to seek to make this a Messengers for Peace Programme. Peter Illing the Messengers for Peace Director has also  embraced the idea and did not need to listen a lot in order to realize and endorse this important issue regarding the whole world. 

 

Together make it loud! We have already our own song created for the 22ndWorld Scout Jamboree.

Since the 22nd World Scout jamboree in Rinkabi Sweden a lot of activities have taken place in Greece and Ireland but now WOSM has a leading role in this and every single scout has a power to manage the change and has a right for mobility in a safer road environment because only when our surrounding environment gets safe we can be secured that the world is a safer place and I will share with you my personal tragic experience of my 22 year old son Panos Milonas who was killed on the road. Panos was completing his studies in the Aeronautics and Engineering Dept of the University in Patras and the youngest accredited journalist in WRC; above all though he was a person of outstanding moral issues and careful driver but this did not prevent him from getting murdered by a driver who was speeding very high coming  from the opposite direction of the road driving with a criminal behavior. This is why I always insist they there should be a holistic approach, the entire environment should be protective, the infrastructure and above all the culture and the human behavior. 

 

For what we can see from the data available about the three factors - vehicle, human behavior, infrastructure - human behavior is of the highest percentage which is 65% and combined to other factors reaches 95% regarding traffic accidents and this is where we should focus our actions. 

 

Together we can make it loud, for our friends, our colleagues, our fellow citizens, our politicians. 

Let’s make this event the milestone to this big change the world needs. This is our project, your project, our chance to change the world, our concern to save lives, our mind, our carrying to mind for your life. It is our responsibility and our right to life, health, integrity, sustainability.

 

Let’s hold it in our hands and protect it. Let’s work for a better world. You deserve it, claim it, conquer it!.

 

Starting today in this direction

 

- experiential learning

 

- working into groups

 

- providing input on pedestrian-related aspects in 

 

   the 1968 Convention on road safety

 

- plan - do – act

 

 

Rover MOOT in Canada will be the another big step to enlarge our group and action 

 

At Working Party WP1 of UNECE bringing together Transport Authorities and NGOs  will highlight our input and commitment to this big change will be delivered, the contribution for global road safety for youth in the world. In this way Scouting can play a key role in making real policy and real change in the World. It's a big challenge, it's a great opportunity. This is a great day! 

 

 

Vassiliki Danelli-Mylona

 

President of the Greek Road Safety Institute (Panos Mylonas)

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