24h Le Mans
Jean Todt, FIA president and two-time Le Mans winner as head of Peugeot Sport, was appointed Special Envoy for Road Safety by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in April 2015. Yesterday, he and his wife Michelle Yeoh, Spokesperson for the FIA High Level Panel for Road Safety, accepted the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the United Nations Association of New York (UNA-NY).
On United Nations Day each October, the UNA-NY bestows the Humanitarian of the Year trophy to individuals and companies for their work to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This year, they presented the award to Jean Todt and Michelle Yeoh, actor and UNDP Goodwill Ambassador, for their action to promote road safety, a subject that Todt takes very much to heart, actively working to reduce road deaths and injury through the FIA Action for Road Safety campaign.
Todt urges citizens to treat road fatalities and injuries with the same urgency as other public health pandemics: We cannot accept that every year 1.25 million people die on the road; 50 million people are injured. I take this award as the opportunity to highlight this carnage.
As Special Envoy for Road Safety, Todt assisted in the creation of a draft resolution to reduce road fatalities by 5 million between 2011 and 2020, adopted by the UN General Assembly in April. The former head of Peugeot Sport and Formula One’s Scuderia Ferrari also helped launch FIA’s 10 Golden Rules for safer motoring.
Photo: UNA-NY President Abid Qureshi awards the Humanitarian of the Year trophy to Michelle Yeoh and Jean Todt.
