The World Health Organization (WHO) and partners have brought together more than 40 leading officials from 14 countries to advance progress in making vehicles safer in Asia and worldwide.
Nearly 1.2 million lives are lost to road crashes around the world each year, and vehicle safety regulations are a crucial tool in reducing road deaths and serious injuries. Despite this, less than 20% of UN Member States have laws that meet all core areas of UN vehicle safety regulations.
Among ASEAN Member States, outdated or unsafe vehicles dominate the markets due to weak import controls and regulatory frameworks. This puts more lives at risk in a region that sees hundreds of thousands of road crash fatalities each year and has a rapidly growing fleet of motor vehicles.
"There are more than one billion motor vehicles on the world's roads today, and this is set to double in the decade to 2030. To save lives, governments must adopt laws that meet key UN safety standards. We need harmonized legislative standards for vehicle design and technology to boost safety worldwide. The workshop supports this by bringing officials together from a crucial region to share knowledge and experience," said Dr Fangfang Luo, WHO Technical Officer on Safety and Mobility.
The third ASEAN+China road safety capacity building workshop, held in Shenzhen, China, on 25–27 November, built on recommendations in the Marrakech Declaration on Global Road Safety that was adopted by Ministers from around 100 countries in February 2025.
The Declaration calls on countries to improve national vehicle safety legislations in line with UN regulations to ensure all new vehicles meet minimum safety standards. This will protect people both within and outside of motor vehicles. It promotes vehicle safety technologies, such as connectivity to prevent crashes and the role of automation to improve road safety.
The three-day workshop covered four main areas:
- priority vehicle safety equipment regulations and their implementation
- technical vehicle inspection regulations and their implementation
- the New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP) and vehicle safety protocols
- evolving vehicle technologies with significant potential to boost road safety.
A highlight was a focus on evolving technologies and developing smart infrastructure and AI-driven monitoring to prevent crashes in real-time. By closing vehicle safety legislation gaps and promoting harmonization with UN regulations, WHO and partners are working to ensure new technologies are properly regulated, adopted and maintained for a safer future.
An action plan was produced by all participants. It includes seminars on crash investigations, especially those related to motorcycles, joint action on road safety education, evaluations of automotive safety technologies and research into the deployment of automated vehicles. A follow-on workshop will be held in late 2026 to build on the action plan.
The workshop was hosted by WHO with the UN Regional Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the International Motor Vehicle Inspection Committee (CITA), Global NCAP, the China Automotive Technology and Research Centre (CATARC) and the Malaysian Institute for Road Safety Research (MIROS).
