World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims 2021: All you need to know

The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims was started by RoadPeace in 1993. In 2005, the United Nations endorsed it as a global day to be observed every third Sunday in November each year, as the “appropriate acknowledgement for victims of road traffic injuries and their families”.

WHO and the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration encourage all road safety stakeholders to commemorate the World Day of Remembrance to pay homage to those who have died on the world’s roads, advocate for better support for victims and bereaved families and promote action to save lives.

Theme: Remember. Support. Act.

The objectives of the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims are to provide a platform for road traffic victims and their families to:

• remember all people killed and seriously injured on the roads;
• acknowledge the crucial work of the emergency services;
• draw attention to the generally trivial legal response to culpable road deaths and injuries
• advocate for better support for road traffic victims and victim families;
• promote evidence-based actions to prevent and eventually stop further road traffic deaths and injuries.

The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims 2021 puts the spotlight on the reduction of traffic speeds – Low speeds, which have the potential to prevent many deaths and serious injuries, in particular those of pedestrians and all other vulnerable road users – children, elderly and the disabled.

Since the adoption of the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, pursuant to UN General Assembly resolution 60/5, the observance has spread to a growing number of countries on every continent.

The Day has become an important tool in global efforts to reduce road casualties. It offers an opportunity for drawing attention to the scale of emotional and economic devastation caused by road crashes and for giving recognition to the suffering of road crash victims and the work of support and rescue services.