PHA-Exchange> Re: UN TO PREPARE MANUALS TO TACKLE HUGE HUMAN AND ECONOMIC COSTS OF TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS

[Sam Lanfranco]

WHO/UNRSC Traffic Accident Prevention Collaboration Initiative
Comment by: Sam Lanfranco, York University, Canada
November 22, 2006

On the surface it would look like this initiative from the World
Health Organization and the UN Road Safety Collaboration is a good
idea. However, on reflection it might very well be a bad idea for a
very standard reason.

Good policy and good implementation involve both doing the right
thing, and doing it the right way. Pointing out the terrible human
and economic costs of traffic accidents is not, in and of itself, a
justification for this or any other initiative, policy or
implementation process designed to reduce traffic road accidents.

The right thing, of course, is to reduce this terrible carnage. Doing
it the right way (read efficient and effective) is another challenge
altogether. Traffic accidents were not “discovered” by WHO or the UN
Road Safety Collaboration, and thousands, if not tens of thousands of
person years have been devoted to creating approaches that address the
issue  and provide guidance on how to design, implement and evaluate
related policies and programmes. In a parallel with the causes of
poor health, many of the causes of accidents have to do with “the
social determinants of traffic accidents” (poverty as an obstacle to
simple things like helmets, seat belts, road signage, decent roads,
etc), and not just the absence of good information, or well meaning
policies.

The wrong thing here is a strategy that addresses the problem in a top
down fashion, spending considerable resources on expensive WHO/UN
level expertise to create manuals and similar “how to” guides to the
design, implementation, and evaluation of policies and programmes.
These “deliverables”, as resources,  for the most part exist
somewhere in the world, and -also- for the most part are knowledge
that only works in context.

The right thing here is to recognize, and draw on, the fact that much
of the needed knowledge already exists, somewhere in the world, along
with lessons learned about what works, or doesn't work, in particular
contexts.

Might not a more efficient and effective strategy be for WHO and the
UN Road Safety Collaboration (UNRSC) to mount a Traffic Accident
Prevention Wiki (TAPwiki), or distributed network of Wikis, where
both WHO and UNRSC can post work in progress -AND- the rest of the
world's traffic accident prevention community can join in to share
knowledge, critique the WHO/UNRSC efforts, and collaborate in
building with what is known in the design of approaches that work.

Information and communications technologies, and application advances
(e.g. Wikis in this case) have changed how things can be done,
especially when it comes to knowledge networking. A top-down
collaboration by WHO and UNRSC would be less effective and more
costly than a more open collaboration using the available electronic
venue tools that are already at hand. Let's do the right thing right!

Sam Lanfranco,
York University
Lanfran at yorku.ca