The Commission for Global Road Safety, an FIA Foundation initiative, is calling on world leaders to contribute significant development funds for road assessment programmes in developing countries.

Of 3,000 adult and 500 child deaths every day on the world's roads, 85% are in developing countries. And the impact is particularly severe in these countries, where the loss of breadwinners in road accidents is a significant cause of poverty among lower income families.

A call for EU-wide legislation to raise the safety on the Trans European Road Network (TERN) to 4-star standard by 2010 comes in a European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP) response to EC proposals on safer road infrastructure. EuroRAP believes this to be the right action for road users who will soon be as intolerant of 2- or 3-star sections of these vital trade routes as they are of cars with just a 2- or 3-star safety rating.