Voice for Peace on the World's Roads - letter to Messrs Obama and Biden (Draft)

I am uploading this draft of the letter to Mr.Obama and Mr.Biden.

I prepared this letter communicating with a lady who played the essential role to let UN acknowledge the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims and the draft was edited by her. However, I am uploading this by my name only because this draft will be amended further and we are now at the stage to contacting people to receive their opinions.

You can give your comments on the letter to this blog or send your e-mail to oguri@cuc.ac.jp .


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To: Mr. Barack Obama & Mr. Joe Biden, President and Vice President Elect, United States of America
From: Names of senders + Yukio Oguri, Ph.D. in City Planning, Professor, Chiba University of Commerce, Japan, Director of Soft Car Project, Honorary member of RoadPeace, oguri@cuc.ac.jp,
Re: Bailout of Car Manufacturers and Change of Automobile and Road Traffic Policy
Date: November 21, 2008

Dear Mr. Obama & Mr. Biden,

We are the voice of people of the world - bereaved families, representatives of road victim and road safety NGOs, transportation and city planners, and citizens of good will, and are writing on their behalf. We have come to be connected by varied networks, one of which was created through the observance of the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims (http://www.worlddayofremembrance.org/), a Day started in 1993 in the UK and observed for a decade in Europe, until it was adopted by United Nations Resolution A60 on 26th October 2005 and since commemorated worldwide.

We were very impressed by your historic victory in the presidential election, which was a people’s victory. We would like to congratulate you and the US people. We also understand that you now face enormous problems and are at present developing your policies.

Among many other plans, we understand that you are seriously considering a bailout of car manufacturers as one of the measures to overcome the financial crisis. Although we understand that this bailout is to avoid possible job losses, we would like to send a keen message of caution.

Car manufacturing and road construction have been the major instruments of economic prosperity of the United States. Many countries all over the world followed the US model, and now developing countries are following it. This model may be named - Car-Road-Growth-Model, which has been very successfully activated by an intimate partnership between governments and car manufacturers.

Painfully though, the success of the Car-Road-Growth-Model has been associated with immense worldwide sacrifice, i.e. disruption of nature, communities, and most importantly, human lives.

Especially, we have to pay serious attention to the outrageous number of sacrificed lives. According to the World Report published by the WHO and World Bank in 2004, 1.2 million people were killed and 20 to 50 million injured worldwide in 2002. An estimated 35 million people have been killed in car crashes worldwide until now. The dimensions exceed by far those of wars. Mr. Kofi Annan, former Secretary - General of the United Nation delivered this message on World Health Day 2004: “Road safety can prevent needless suffering, but does not happen by chance” (http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/sgsm9224.doc.htm).

We learned that family members of both of you were killed and injured in car crashes and would like to send our sincere sympathy.

Victims of road traffic are the sacrifice of the Car-Road-Growth-Model, for which both governments and business, especially car manufacturers, need to accept responsibility. Change will only truly come when the Car-Road-Growth-Model is remodeled and the right actions are taken.

With this in view, we strongly urge you not to take action to bail out American car-makers. If you take the action of bailing out, it will mean that you ignore the immense sacrifices, which will become even larger in scale especially in developing countries, though it will not be your intention. In case it is taken, this should only be with a strong condition that cars must be remodeled not to kill or seriously injure people.

* Many research projects for safe vehicle systems in our network show that after a revision of their excessive power and speeding capability, cars can still work well, can be better controlled by drivers, can be manufactured cheaper, will consume less energy, and most importantly, will be far less likely to kill or injure people - this will therefore be a positive step forward all round as it will also stimulate new technologies, create new demand and create new job opportunities.

This conditional bailout should also be combined with a drastic change of transportation policy - essentially from car dependency to walking, bicycling ad using public transportation.

Many people are ready to work with you to change the world to one of prosperity without sacrifice.

Your adoption of the initiatives outlined above is most crucial to such a change in the world, especially since US policy is so influential and people all over the world are expecting from you and your government to bring about positive change.

We are looking forward to your response.

Yours sincerely