Renault Group and the United Nations, via the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), have entered into a two-year strategic partnership agreement to support the work of the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Road Safety, Jean Todt.
With this partnership, Renault Group has become the first automobile manufacturer to take a stand alongside the Special Envoy's Secretariat and is stepping up its long-standing commitment to increasingly safe and accessible mobility in all its markets.
The partners will take action together to promote road safety by providing training, raising awareness and deploying innovation, with a view to benefiting everyone on roads.
Boulogne-Billancourt (France) and Geneva (Switzerland) - Renault Group and the Secretariat of the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Road Safety announce today a partnership to draw attention to road safety around the world, provide training and deploy technological breakthroughs to save lives. By supporting the UN's endeavour, Renault Group is reasserting its determination to work towards ever safer and more accessible mobility benefiting everyone on roads. During this two-year partnership, Renault Group will share with the Special Envoy the expertise it has gathered through its long-standing commitment to road safety.
Renault Group's commitment supports the UN's aim to halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic crashes.
"For Renault, taking safety seriously doesn't just mean ticking boxes. It means fulfilling our regulatory obligations but also pushing further, guided by what we believe in and our determination to make a difference. By coming up with solutions that make our cars even safer and by pushing innovation everywhere it makes sense. So we are pioneering technology, but also taking action that can potentially make mobility safer, while ranking the issue at the top of the agenda everywhere. That is why I feel very happy that we are supporting Jean Todt's and the United Nations' commitment to road safety" Luca de Meo, Chief Executive Officer of Renault Group
A major societal concern
In a world where road crashes remain the leading killer of children and youth aged 5 to 29 years (WHO 2023), there is an urgent need for collective efforts to address this crisis and pave the way for safer roads.
"There were an estimated 1.19 million road traffic deaths in 2021. These new WHO figures give us a sense of the horror we have to deal with. This is why it is so urgent to join forces with partners such as Renault to put an end to the carnage and shine a light on this silent pandemic. Without the active involvement of all actors, including institutional and public sector partners, civil society and the private sector, including car manufacturers, we won't achieve our objective of halving the number of victims on roads by 2030. I commend Renault Group for its leadership and commitment at our side in this battle." Jean Todt, the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Road Safety.
Road safety facts and figures worldwide (World Health Organization, 2023)
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1.19 million road traffic deaths in 2021
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The leading cause of deaths among children and youths aged 15 to 29
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Only 7 countries (France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal and Sweden) have applied the WHO's legislative best practices relating to five risk factors: speeding, drinking and driving, not wearing seat belts, not wearing helmets, and not transporting children in child restraints
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Only 10 countries (Belarus, Brunei Darussalam, Denmark, Japan, Lithuania, Norway, Russian Federation, Trinidad and Tobago, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela) succeeded in reducing road traffic deaths by over 50% between 2010 and 2021.
About Renault Group
Renault Group is at the forefront of reinventing mobility. Backed by its alliance with Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors, and its unique expertise in terms of electrification, Renault Group draws on the complementary nature of its four brands - Renault, Dacia, Alpine and Mobilize - to offer its customers sustainable and innovative mobility solutions. With operations in more than 130 countries, the Group sold 2.235 million vehicles in 2023. It employs nearly 105,000 people who embody its raison d'être on a daily basis, so that mobility brings us closer to one another. Ready to take up challenges on the road as well as in competition, the Group is committed to an ambitious and value-generating transformation. This is centred on the development of new technologies and services, and a new range of even more competitive, balanced and electrified vehicles. In line with environmental challenges, Renault Group's ambition is to achieve carbon neutrality in Europe by 2040.
About the UN and road safety
The United Nations has been promoting road safety since the late 1940s, when the first international agreements on the issue were signed. Following the "Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020", the UN General Assembly in August 2020 adopted a resolution on "Improving Road Safety", that reconfirmed its commitment to halving the number of global traffic deaths and injuries and to providing access to safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable transport systems for all by 2030. In October 2021, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Regional Commissions, in cooperation with partners in the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration and other stakeholders, developed the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030, as a guiding document to support the implementation of the Decade of Action 2021-2030 and its objectives.
In July 2022, the road safety community met in New York City for the first ever High-Level Meeting on Improving Global Road Safety at the United Nations General Assembly, unanimously adopting a text titled: "Political declaration of the high-level meeting on improving global road safety".
To galvanize intersectoral actions and raise the visibility of road safety, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, appointed in 2015 Jean Todt as his Special Envoy for Road Safety. He was reconfirmed in this role by António Guterres, in 2017 and in 2021. In 2018, Jean Todt contributed to the creation of the UN Road Safety Fund (UNRSF). In his role as UN Special Envoy, Mr. Todt contributes, among other things, to mobilize sustained political commitment to make road safety a priority; to advocate and raise awareness of UN legal instruments on road safety; to share established good practices in this area; to generate adequate funding through strategic partnerships between the public, private and non-governmental sectors.
Special Envoy brochure and Twitter account.
The secretariat of the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Road Safety is hosted in UNECE. UNECE is the custodian of the United Nations road safety legal instruments applicable worldwide, such as the Convention on Road Traffic, the Convention on Road Signs and Signals, and the 1958, 1997 and 1998 Vehicle Regulations Agreements. UNECE remains the only permanent intergovernmental forum in the United Nations that focuses on improving road safety.
