United Nations may impose a tax on tyres, new vehicles and imported used cars for creating a global fund for road safety along the lines of the Ebola cess that was imposed on global airline travel for fighting the disease and carrying out research. It was proposed at the recently conducted global summit on road safety in Brazil as an innovative way of generating funds for fighting road crashes that shall become the seventh biggest cause of death by the year 2020.

Currently, it is the ninth biggest cause of death in general and the largest among youths in the age group of 15 to 29 years.

Jean Todt, the special envoy for road safety under United Nations secretary general has announced the creation of a high level panel for creating a UN fund that a symbolic instrument of tying financing together. A proposal has also been put forth to create this fund in the resolution for the next UNGA in coming spring 2016.

Todt has pointed out that annually 18 million cars are sold across the world and almost a billion tyres are sold. The alcohol making industry also has great responsibility and has to contribute to the corpus as it is one of main contributors to road casualties. A surcharge of a dollar or two by makers shall reap millions more for road safety initiatives.

Bertrand Badre, the World Bank’s Chief Financial officer has commented that the funding for the road safety shall primarily come from national governments while putting forth the proposal of an innovative financing model for road safety.