18/09/2020

Commitment to road safety and mobility

Since the middle of last year, the Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation has been working hard so that from the different government spheres the importance of road safety and mobility is visualized, and the work of these spheres is incorporated in different areas. In this sense, last year Nani Rodriguez, president of the foundation, met with the candidates for the presidency of the Republic of Uruguay of all political parties to present the problem - that many did not know. Similarly, a document was signed with all the political parties, in which they committed to work on these issues and to implement some key points in order to meet the goal (to which Uruguay subscribed) set by the United Nations Decade of Action, which aimed to reduce to 50% the number of deaths in traffic accidents in the world by the end of the decade 2010-2020.

These events were part of the 3rd World Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, held on February 19 and 20, 2020 in Stockholm, Sweden, where representatives of the foundation participated. There, it was recognized that target 3.6 of the Sustainable Development Goals will not be met by the end of 2020, "and that significant progress can only be achieved through greater national leadership, global collaboration, implementation of evidence-based strategies and involvement of all relevant stakeholders, including the private sector, as well as additional innovative approaches. That is why, at the end of the Conference, a declaration was presented calling for a redoubling of commitment and recommitment to an ambitious goal for the coming years.

In that sense, and betting to continue generating awareness among the different spaces of government, the foundation worked again, this time at a departmental level. This time the work was divided into two stages. On the one hand, a series of webinars were developed with each political party (National Party, Broad Front, Colorado Party and Open Council) to develop with their technical teams the importance of working at the departmental level to lower the number of serious injuries and deaths from traffic accidents.

On the other hand, Nani Rodriguez met personally with the candidates for the Montevideo and Canelones (the two most populated departments in Uruguay) to discuss road safety and mobility, the developments that have taken place, and what still needs to be done.