Road trip across Asia, backed by U.N. under guise of promoting road safety

The Driving Home Road Safety 2007 project was the brainchild of two middle-aged Britons who wanted an excuse to travel the new interconnecting Asia Highway roads all the way from Tokyo to London. It was touted as:

"an epic journey along the newly completed Asia-Pacific Highway bringing world attention to road safety awareness and raising money to help save children from deaths and injury on the roads."

The United Nations jumped on board, eager for a way to promote their Make Roads Safe and Road Safety is no Accident campaigns whose purpose are "to help reduce the shocking toll of road-related injuries and fatalities, particularly in developing nations."

The car driven across the countries was a sponsored Aston Martin with advertising labels all over its exterior. The most profound of these stickers were from the U.N. projects in bold white type: "Make Roads Safe" and "Road Safety is no Accident." Since most of the countries they drove through were non-English speaking and - to say politely - developing , most of the people who saw the car probably had no idea what it was all about.

So promoting road safety is one thing, but doing it in a car is environmentally irresponsible. Especially since the number of vehicles in a huge polluting nation such as China are growing rapidly.

The explosion of car use in China is a major environmental concern. According to The Ecologist, just over 15 years ago there were about 1 million vehicles in use. This has risen to 12 million in 2005; and China estimates that by 2020 there will be some 140 million cars in use. Still, right now, that turns out to be about eight car users per 1,000 people; in the U.S. there are 950 cars per 1,000.

Unfortunately because of the new interconnecting road system, this explosion of vehicles can now do just what these two men did, drive around and pollute the environment. To really make the world "safe" the big picture of health and environmental protection needs to be addressed. A flashy campaign to let two thrill-seeking men drive through various developing Asian nations is just a ruse to make people feel good about themselves under the pretense of doing the good for others. These guys probably arose more interest in driving and possessing a car than anything about being so-called safe.

Read the complete diary: Driving Home Road Safety 2007