IF YOU?RE reading this in the afternoon Wednesday, it may be at the same time that former Bond girl Michelle Yeoh is distributing free crash helmets to public school children at the Department of Education compound, after speaking before the Asian Development Bank. Or the beautiful star of ?Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,? now the Make Roads Safe Ambassador of the FIA Foundation, may be at the University of the Philippines in Diliman to unveil the marker of the Road Safety Park to be built on campus by the Automobile Association Philippines (AAP) and UP National Center for Transportation Studies with Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation as sponsor.

Ahead of Ms Yeoh?s arrival in Manila Tuesday, a thousand Protec helmets were shipped to AAP as part of the Global Helmet Vaccine Initiative (GHVI) organized by the FIA Foundation?s Make Roads Safe Campaign, Asia Injury Prevention Foundation and the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility. But since the school year won?t open until next month, DepEd managed to gather for today?s event only around 260 children who ride behind their parents on motorcycles to go to school. The rest of the helmets will be distributed later this year by AAP at public schools.

WHY

Some of you may be wondering why the Federation Internationale de l?Automobile (FIA) Foundation is implementing the GHVI, since the FIA, which established the foundation in 2001 with a $300 million grant, is the non-profit federation of 228 automobile clubs and is mainly identified with governing all four-wheel motorsports like Formula One and the World Rally Championship. Shouldn?t the Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) be the one promoting the use of motorcycle helmets worldwide?

At the 2010 FIA Conference Week in Como, Italy, last week which I attended as part of the AAP delegation with AAP president Gus Lagman, I asked a FIA director about this. He explained that the FIA Foundation, which succeeded in obtaining from the United Nations General Assembly last March a resolution declaring 2010-2020 the Decade of Action for Road Safety, approaches the need to prevent road crashes wholistically. Or, phrased another way, the FIA Foundation wants to save all road users?not only car occupants. Thus the Decade of Action aims to cut the projected increase in road deaths by 50 percent by 2020.

VULNERABLE

Every day, of the more than 3,500 people killed and 137,000 injured or disabled in road crashes worldwide, almost nine out of 10 of these road deaths and injuries occur in developing countries. Research shows that in low-income countries, the most vulnerable are the pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists and those using public transport, whether formal or informal. Road crashes have overtaken malaria as a major killer in developing countries and are forecast to be the number one cause of disability and premature death for children aged 5-14 by 2015. Road crashes have become a spreading public health crisis in the Third World.

In the Philippines as in other developing countries, the use of motorcycles as the means of daily transportation has soared dramatically because two-wheelers are much more affordable than cars. But the increase in motorbike use has come with a corresponding increase in road crashes. Children who ride with their parents on motorbikes, helmetless, are most vulnerable. Helmets on heads will save tens of thousands of young lives each year, thus the international ?Helmet Vaccine Initiative.?

SAFER ROADS

But helmet wearing is by no means the only road safety project of the FIA Foundation, which also promotes seatbelt use and funds the International Road Assessment Program (iRAP) in 50 countries together with the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility, regional development banks and donors. iRAP, a non-profit organization dedicated to saving lives through safer roads, offers simple, affordable improvements to road infrastructure that can dramatically reduce both the risk of crashes occurring and their severity. The good news is that iRAP, with World Bank funding and the involvement of AAP and the Philippine division of the Global Road Safety Partnership Inc., is coming soon to our country.

For many of us, road safety is a boring subject until we or someone close to us has a road accident. Or until celebrities capture our attention. As Michelle Yeoh said in an interview about her commitment to road safety, ?Other good causes have the world?s attention, the funding and the support of celebrities and high profile figures. We spend billions of dollars in research to combat AIDS but, for road safety we have the vaccine, we have the cure, so why is it not being implemented? That is the real tragedy?the road deaths epidemic could be tackled but it needs the world?s attention to be focused on it. I wanted to help tell people that action is needed.?