Pirelli has become the first tyre company to join the United Nations Road Safety Trust Fund, pledging a contribution of $600,000 (2018-2019) to help the fund in its efforts to make significant impact in global road safety. At the same time, the company’s Chief Sustainability and Risk Governance Officer, Filippo Bettini, was nominated to a seat on the fund’s Advisory Board.
United Nations Road Safety Trust Fund Adds Pirelli as First Member
Pirelli’s strategy to increase driving safety, through the application of innovative technologies. Contributing to the fund, and thus to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of halving the number of worldwide road accident deaths by 2020, is a natural extension of the company’s own mission.
“I welcome this important pledge from to the United Nations Road Safety Trust Fund. With momentum building, I call on the support of other donors so that we may scale up the resources urgently required for action to address the critical road safety situation”, stated the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety, Jean Todt.
“The Road Safety fund promoted by the United Nations is an important initiative which Pirelli is pleased to support and which we quickly joined when the opportunity of participating was proposed by the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety, Jean Todt. For Pirelli road safety is fundamental. We have long standing collaborations with FIA (International Automobile Federation) and other international institutions in support of concrete projects regarding these themes in many countries,” stated the Executive Vice Chairman and CEO of Pirelli, Marco Tronchetti Provera.
“Our product is the only part of the vehicle that comes into contact with the road and is therefore the linchpin of all its safety systems. Throughout our history, we have been dedicated to the constant improvement of tyre safety and we are now moving into the area of intelligent tyres with the greater monitoring and ecosystem communication capabilities they bring,” said Pirelli’s Bettini.
Bettini added, “however, as important as individual efforts are, it is clear that collaboration – with government agencies, associations, advocacy groups – is the key to significantly reducing the number of road accidents globally.”
According to UN data, an estimated 1.25 million people are killed every year in road accidents and up to 50 million more are injured which adds up to a cost of around $1.85 trillion to the global economy.
The United Nations Road Safety Trust Fund, which was established earlier this year, aims to accelerate progress in improving road safety by tapping new resources to stimulate effective action. It will focus on strengthening the capacity of governments, including local and city authorities to develop and implement road safety programmes with low and middle- income countries the priority. UNECE estimates that every $1,500 contributed to the Road Safety Trust Fund could save one life, prevent ten serious injuries and leverage $51,000 in road safety investment.
