Traffic Safety: National Partnership and Corporate Social Responsibility

ABSTRACTThe World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that road accidents worldwide cause the death of 1.3 million people annually, and injure 50 million people with a number of them suffering extremely serious injuries, in addition to enormous financial losses. The WHO indicated that road accidents would become the third cause of death among the fifteen primary causes of death in 2020 [1]. Traffic accidents in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia pose a serious concern for officials and the Saudi society. It is one of the most common dangers that exhausts human and material resources, and approximately 6,596 young die each year with additional 38,000 seriously injured; the fatal traffic accident rate in the youth group is of 240 per million, which is the highest in the world [2]. Traffic accidents are also the main cause of death in the age group 18 to 30 years old [3]. Addressing this problem is significantly essential. Many countries around the world have realized the importance of traffic safety as a broad concept as well as the mutual relation between traffic safety and economic and social growth. Traffic safety has also become a social and corporate responsibility that requires cooperation and coordination between various parties. Although the principal responsibility falls on concerned authorities such as the ministries of interior, transportation, and health and municipalities, this should be a social and corporate responsibility, as well as a national issue that all segments of the society have to be involved with [4].