Raise awareness about the importance of traffic safety and reduce deaths. This is the proposal of the Yellow May 2024 campaign, launched this Thursday (2) by the Ministry of Transport, through the National Traffic Secretariat (Senatran).
In this year’s edition, the theme chosen, by popular vote, was “Peace in traffic starts with you”. The campaign foresees a series of actions to be developed by bodies that are part of the National Transit System (SNT).
“It is an important moment of reflection for all of us. It’s making society reflect a little on the importance we need to place on the daily lives of our families, of all bodies involved in road safety. It is very important for us to preserve lives in traffic”, said the ministry’s executive secretary, George Santoro (photo).
“Brazil, unfortunately, has been performing unsatisfactorily. We have many deaths in traffic, on our streets, roads and highways”, he added, during the campaign launch ceremony in Brasília. According to him, more than 5 thousand points classified as critical on highways were listed – where the highest number of accidents are mapped.
The director of the National Land Transport Agency (ANTT), Luciano Lourenço, highlighted, during the event, the importance of empathy and individual and collective attitudes to guarantee peace and safety in traffic. “When we talk about peace in traffic, we talk about attitudes. Attitudes that minimally or mostly promote life.”
“Being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, have empathy and patience. In urban traffic, this is even more unusual. In this madness that we have, with the ticking of the clock pressing on our time, making our head think a thousand things at the same time, we often lack patience. And this impatience can be reflected in aggressiveness or lack of attention, like being hit by a car, claiming a life.”
Data from the Ministry of Health, which monitors hospitalizations and traffic deaths, shows that, in 2022, 34 thousand people lost their lives in the country due to traffic accidents. 212 thousand hospitalizations were also recorded, generating a total cost of R$350 million for the sector.
“There are R$350 million that could be invested in building hospitals and units. But we are admitting young people”, highlighted the department’s Secretary of Health and Environmental Surveillance, Ethel Maciel. “If we look at the last five years, our traffic kills more young people than many countries that are at war. It’s something very serious.”
“We are losing our young people aged 20 to 29 – especially men, who die six times more often than women – to our traffic”, concluded the secretary.
