«Samopomich» initiate a National Program on Road Safety

Deputy faction of the association "Samopomich" Igor Didenko activated the work on the road safety in Ukraine. On his initiative, the first time in the Committee on Transport of Verkhovna Rada established a subcommittee on safety on the road. As Ihor Didenko said, the aim of this program is to bring the accident statistics to the public. "And as a starting phase of this – we are starting to conduct inspections that concerns the situation with marking the pedestrian crossings, because almost half of those accidents – are because pedestrians that do not violate the rules," - said the deputy. He also highlighted the main priorities of the program: - An independent organization that would coordinate all areas of the program, which is education, health, infrastructure, internal affairs; - Involve local communities to monitor the performance of local government duties, in particular the condition of the roads and pedestrian crossings; - To involve the community to control the use of funds that should go for repair roads, etc. In the past few months Subcommittee held a series of meetings and roundtables with the public, experts and government representatives. Following the meeting, a subcommittee initiates establishment of the National Agency for Road Safety, which will be the main coordinating body in the country that will oversee the implementation of national road safety. According to Mr. Didenko, it is very important that this agency was not another corruption body structure. It is designed to coordinate all public authorities, control of their tasks, engage and monitor funding. It could be manage by experts, government representatives, community and voluntary organizations, consultants and experts from Europe, which have very good experience and understanding of the problems and ways to solve it. "In Ukraine the situation with road safety is not very easy: a lot of people died on road each day, many of them - children. This is the second war, but on the road. It is important to stop this war and work together supporting my initiative to implement the National Agency and the National Program on Road Safety. In Europe, the work in this direction has significantly reduced mortality and injury on the roads. Ukraine, unfortunately, now occupies last place according to statistics, "- said Igor Didenko. The national program on road safety involves not only attracting power by creating agencies, but also support and preventive work at the level of regions and communities. It is also planned to involve society and the to inform citizens not only about  an accident that has already happened, but also how to avoid them: by training children, parents, and so on. Today, representatives of the "Samopomich" implementing the program on road safety in different regions, particularly in Lviv, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr and other cities. It is important that all the regions of Ukraine were involved in such programs.