Michelle Yeoh urges road safety action at Asian Development Bank

ADB Vice President Dr Ursula Schaefer-Preuss and Michelle Yeoh speak at press conference

Saul Billingsley, Deputy Director, FIA Foundation, and Xianbin Yao, ADB Director General, Regional and Sustainable Development, sign a MOU on road safety

Michelle Yeoh and the FIA Foundation delegation meet with ADB Managing Director General Rajat Nag

Michelle Yeoh, Global Ambassador for the Make Roads Safe campaign has urged governments in Asia to support the UN goal of reducing road deaths in the Decade of Action, in a speech at the headquarters of the Asian Development Bank in Manila, Philippines.

Michelle Yeoh was keynote speaker at the Asian Development Bank’s annual Transport Forum, bringing together government officials and road safety practitioners from across the Asia/Pacific region. She welcomed the ADB’s new Sustainable Transport Initiative, which prioritises road safety, and the Bank’s support for the joint statement by all the major multilateral development banks pledging new attention to safety within road projects. ADB spends around $4 billion a year on transport programmes, mostly road building and rehabilitation. The Bank is now promoting a shift in its policy to a ‘people-focused’ approach that emphasises accessibility over mobility, and places safety and environmental concerns at the heart of lending decisions.

Michelle Yeoh said:

“The Make Roads Safe campaign has consistently called on the multilateral development banks to make road safety a greater priority, to use their vast lending capacity as a force for good.

The role of the Asian Development Bank is so crucially important. The Asia and the Pacific region is facing an epidemic of road death and injury, but we also have innovative Asian road safety solutions such as the International Road Assessment Programme, which is transforming the way we understand safe road design, and the Global Helmet Vaccine Initiative. There is so much we can do to save lives on our roads."

ADB's Vice-President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development, Ursula Schaefer-Preuss, said:
"Every year some 1.18 million people globally are victims of fatal road accidents, and 60% of all road accidents occur here in Asia and the Pacific. Equally notable is how this issue impacts the poor, who suffer gravely from unsafe roads, while remaining marginalized by transport policies that are biased in favour of private vehicles."

The event also saw the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the FIA Foundation and the ADB, in which the two organisations agree to work together to promote road safety. Specific activities for joint collaboration will include road infrastructure safety assessment, the Global Helmet Vaccine Initiative (GHVI), and initiatives to promote safer vehicles and vehicle technologies. Discussions on implementing these programmes were held between Vice President Schaefer-Preuss; the ADB’s Vice President for Finance and Adminstration, Bindu Lohani; ADB Managing Director General Rajat Nag; and a delegation led by Michelle Yeoh including Saul Billingsley, Deputy Director of the FIA Foundation; Greig Craft and Mirjam Sidik, respectively President and Executive Director of GHVI; and Rob McInerney and Greg Smith, respectively CEO and Asia Region Director of the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP).