[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 153 (Monday, November 29, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1997]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  ACKNOWLEDGING WORLD REMEMBRANCE DAY

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                            HON. DAN BURTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, November 29, 2010

  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, I rise today to take a moment 
to pay my respects to road traffic victims in honor of World Day of 
Remembrance, this Sunday. Since 1993, this special Remembrance Day 
responds to the great need that road crash victims and their loved ones 
harbor for public recognition of their loss and pain.
  The sense of grief and distress of this large group of people is all 
the greater because many of the victims are young and many of the 
crashes could have been prevented. The response to road death and 
injury is often experienced as inadequate, cruelly unsympathetic, and 
inappropriate to a loss of life or quality of life. In 2005, the United 
Nations took it global, endorsing it to be the third Sunday in November 
each year, encouraging NGOs, such as the Association for Safe 
International Road Travel to commemorate this day.
  Clinton Oster, an environment and public policy professor at Indiana 
University in Bloomington, served as chairman of a committee that wrote 
a report on reducing traffic deaths in our Nation, released on Tuesday.
  According to the report, transportation safety authorities in other 
countries have been successful at reducing fatalities by taking a 
different overall approach, with an emphasis on demonstrating and 
documenting programs that work and then aggressively making their case 
for those programs with political leaders and the public.
  It is estimated that 1.3 million people die in road crashes each 
year. Unless action is taken, road traffic injuries are predicted to 
become the fifth leading cause of death by 2030.
  As Oster said, if such programs were widely adopted in the U.S., it's 
probable that thousands of lives could be saved each year.
  It is my hope that recognizing Remembrance Day will signal the 
importance the issue of reducing road danger to government.

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