If road deaths were a virus, we’d call it a pandemic. Safer transport helps us all – and we need it urgently | Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Jean Todt

Deaths on the road costs countries up to 5% of GDP. Centring transport around people, not cars, can propel development

If you had to guess the leading cause of death for children and young people around the world, what would you say? Malaria perhaps? Pneumonia? Suicide? They're all high up there, but no, it's road accidents.

Cars have been around for more than 120 years, and we know how to prevent these tragedies. Yet road crashes still claim more than two lives every minute - killing nearly 1.2 million people every year.