The "Road to Safety" in Irish children over the past five years.
Motor vehicle crashes account for 1 in 5 of all childhood deaths across The EU. In the year 2000, the World Health Organization ranked road traffic accidents as the ninth leading cause of mortality, accounting for 2.3% of deaths worldwide. In 1997, the European Commission published the European Union RoadSafety Programme. This had been prepared against a background of 45,000 road- related fatalities and 1.6 million injuries occurring within the European Union each year. At that stage, Ireland had not yet developed a formal national road safety strategy. By 1998 however, the "Road to Safety" government strategy was put in place with the aim of reducing deaths and serious injuries from road traffic accidents by at least 20% over the five year period beginning 1998 and ending 2002. Age-standardised mortality rates for road accidents in children (0-14 years old) in Ireland are 3.61 per 100,000 as compared to 2.31 per 100,000 in Sweden and thus much needs to be done to reduce this unacceptably high road toll in Ireland. To date there has been insufficient evidence available for childhood road-related accidents occurring within Ireland.