INTRODUCTION 1.1Brazil’s Transport Context

1.1.INTRODUCTION

1.1Brazil’s Transport Context

Brazil has around 1.6 million km of road network, with about 85% unpaved.² Only 8% of the road network are dual-carriageway highways. The higher road density is found on the coastal fringe, where most of the country’s population is located. The majority of the road network is managed by the municipalities (about 1.3 million km), while the federal and state road networks are respectively about 76,000 km and 120,000 km.³ Road is the dominant transport mode in Brazil. It is estimated that about two-thirds of the cargo are transported on Brazil roads. The proportion is even higher for passenger transport, even if air transport gained market shares over the past years.

Motorization rate has steeply increased over the past years. The motorization rate has increased on average by 12.5% annually from 2001 to 2012. Even more alarming, the number of motorcycles has sky-rocketed, with an increase averaging over 30% per annum from the 2001 baseline. The non-motorcycle fleet has a little more than doubled from 2001 to 2012, while the motorcycle fleet has increased over three fold. In 2012, there were about 76 million motor vehicles in Brazil, out of which about 20 million where motorcycles. These elements related to the rate of motorization are key to understand the Road Safety situation in Brazil.

1.2The Global Road Safety Situation

The burden of road related trauma is extremely unevenly distributed, with over 90% of road fatalities occur in low-income and middle-income countries. Disturbingly, the gap is widening: most of the improvement in road deaths is occurring in high income countries while the situation in low and middle income countries overall is worsening, primarily due to increasing motorization. In 2004, road traffic injury was the ninth leading causes of death, and 8^th leading cause in 2010, but it is estimated by WHO that by 2030, without concerted action, road traffic will be at fifth place ahead of such diseases as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.⁶ Road traffic injuries are already among the three leading causes of death for people between 5 and 44 years of age. Furthermore, as the WHO noted, the economically disadvantaged are most affected by road crashes and trauma. Families are driven into poverty by the loss of the breadwinner. In low and middle income countries, many families rely on males as breadwinners and males are disproportionately at risk of death and disabling injury in traffic crashes. In Brazil, 81% of fatally injured road crash victims are males.

WHO estimated that the economic costs of motor vehicle crashes were between 1% and 3% of the GDP of the world’s countries. However, more recent analyses of costs of crashes employing improved methods (based on value of a statistical life year)⁷ suggest that this may be a dramatic under-estimate with estimated costs for low and middle income countries rising as high as 5% to 8% of GDP⁸. These estimates cover the many aspects of costs of crashes: emergency response, health care and rehabilitation costs, lost income during recover or due to death, lifetime care for the disabled, and property damage costs. It is of great concern that the latter estimate of 5-8% of GDP would be a reasonable estimate of costs for Brazil. The present report employs the latter estimate and other methods to estimate costs for Brazil.

1.3The United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 and Future Plans

The United Nations Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020¹⁰ is based on the Safe System approach described below. In 2009 and again in 2013, WHO published Global Status Reports¹¹ on Road Safety that showed that significantly more action is needed to make the world’s roads safer. In low and middle income countries, action is needed on all fronts: roads and road-sides, speeds, vehicles and equipment, and behavior.

In September 2015, the UN General Assembly approved within the Objectives of Sustainable Development, two specific targets for Road Safety. The first target (Target 3.6) is to divide by two, by 2020, the number of deaths and injuries from traffic accidents. The second target (Target 11.1) mentions explicitly the improvement of Road Safety.

In November 2015, Brazil will host the Ministerial mid-term review of the United Nations Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. Work is already underway on reviewing the Global Plan as well as progress towards the decade’s goals.