Jean Todt, former rally co-driver and Ferrari Formula One team principal, now serves as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety. Reflecting on his early years in motorsport, Todt said, “When I started as a boy, it was very, very dangerous. People were not surprised if somebody got killed in a racing car.”

Thanks to decades of engineering, regulation, and safety improvements, Todt notes that a 200mph crash is now often survivable, and “everybody now would be surprised if somebody would be injured in a racing car.”

Todt urges a similar transformation for everyday road users—including school children, motorbike commuters, and delivery riders—because the fatality rates on ordinary roads remain as high as motorsport once was. Globally, 1.2 million people die on roads each year, making road traffic injuries the leading cause of death for children and young people aged 5 to 29. Todt describes this as a “silent pandemic on the road.”

This week, world leaders and ministers are gathering at the UN Headquarters in New York for a two-day meeting focused on halving road deaths by 2030, a target currently off track.

Todt emphasized that unlike other pandemics, solutions exist: “education, law enforcement, quality of vehicles, quality of roads, quality of post-crash care.” He advocates starting education early, saying, “If you educate a young boy or girl, six, seven, eight years old, then immediately they will know how to behave,” and they influence adult behavior as well.

However, he warned that education alone is insufficient without enforcement: “If people know they can behave badly without consequences, there is no reason to change.” He added that corruption “cannot work with” effective law enforcement.

Sources