Traffic safety is a growing public health challenge, particularly in developing countries. Worldwide, approximately 1.2 million people die each year in traffic accidents. The vast majority of those fatalities – more than 1 million – occur in countries with low- and middle-income economies.
The World Health Organization reports that traffic accidents were the ninth leading threat to global public health in 1990, but such accidents are expected to rise to the third leading threat by 2020. All of that projected increase is forecasted to take place in low- and middle-income countries; high-income countries are actually expected to see a decrease of 30 percent in traffic deaths between 2000 and 2020.
Many of the traffic deaths in developing nations involve pedestrians and/or motorcycles. And their effect on families and communities is devastating: traffic accidents in developing countries are a major cause of poverty, since those killed or disabled are often family breadwinners.
This critical global challenge requires holistic solutions, including infrastructure improvements, the modification of road user behavior and the enforcement of traffic laws, as well as continued improvements in vehicle safety. We at Ford continue to take seriously our responsibility to build safe vehicles. Increasingly, we have also become more involved in finding new and innovative ways to modify road user behavior (for example, through new technologies and driver education efforts) and to encourage infrastructure and enforcement improvements in the communities in which we operate. This section details our latest efforts and achievements in all of these areas.
Assessing Materiality
We analyzed the importance of vehicle safety to our Company and stakeholders as part of the materiality analysis conducted for this report. Vehicle safety was identified as one of a small set of material issues for the Company. Customers are showing greater concern for vehicle safety and making it a higher priority in purchase decisions, while other stakeholders, including NGOs, tend to focus on particular aspects of safety. There is a trend toward increased regulation of vehicle safety worldwide, with inconsistent regulations creating barriers to trade. An emerging issue for us at Ford is how to respond to consumer interest in in-vehicle communication, navigation and entertainment systems while maintaining or improving vehicle safety (see Materiality Analysis).
