ACCRA, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations on Friday called for urgent actions on speed management in Ghana, as it climaxed the UN Global Road Safety week.
The action will aim at reducing road accidents, deaths and injuries by 50 percent by 2020, the target established in the Global Goals for Sustainable Development for the next 15 years (2030).
The UN global road safety week focuses on speed management and what can be done by all stakeholders to address that key risk factor of road accidents, deaths and injuries.
More than 1.25 million people die each year on the world's roads, making road traffic injuries one of the leading causes of death globally.
According to the National Road Safety Commission, speeding contributes to 60 percent of road accidents in Ghana.
Already, between January and April this year, the commission recorded over 4,000 accidents, involving more than 6,000 vehicles that resulted in over 700 deaths due to speeding. Almost 4,000 people have been injured.
The UN Resident Coordinator to Ghana, Christine Evans-Klock, called for stakeholders' action to reduce speeding on the roads to save lives and also to achieve the SDG target of halving the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents by 2020.
"UN Member-States have agreed on this ambitious target to save lives on our roads...and it is our joint responsibility to make sure this goal becomes a reality in Ghana," she told the media.
