An ambitious campaign aimed at reducing road carnage globally was unveiled in Kenya on Friday.

The "Think Before You Drive" road safety campaign, sponsored by UK-based FIA Foundation and Bridgestone Corporation is designed to help reduce road deaths, globally estimated at 1.2 million annually.

Kenya is the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to roll out the global campaign, which has been billed as the largest private sector road safety sensitization initiative.

The campaign, which is to be carried out in east Africa by Automobile Association of Kenya (AA) will promote simple road safety messages to drivers and car users, while addressing many of the key road safety risk factors such as speeding and driving while under the influence of alcohol.

"The objective of this campaign is to reduce thousands of unnecessary injuries and deaths, often caused by drivers and car occupants not following simple instructions such as wearing a seatbelt, using a child restraint, checking head rests and tires," said AA Kenya Director General David Njoroge.

"So many road deaths and injuries are entirely preventable, either because the crash could have been avoided in the first place, or because the injury consequences could have been mitigated by simple safety actions," he said during the launch in Nairobi.

Kenya's Transport Minister Chris Murungaru said that the ambitious campaign would play a complementary role by educating road users on life-saving practices and hailed the initiative as a timely development in line with the concerted efforts by the government to address the road safety issues.

"In Kenya road accidents account for the loss of 3,000 lives annually, a significant proportion of these being young and productive men and women in the 15-45 years age bracket," Murungaru said in speech read on his behalf.

He said that economic costs of such road accidents and fatalities stood in excess of 3.6 billion shillings (about US$ 48.7 million).

About € 80,000 (about US$97,808 dollars) has been invested into the Kenyan campaign, which has so far rolled out in Europe, Asia and Latin American countries since its launch in May this year.

Components of the campaign will include the distribution of road safety advice brochures and tire gauges for measuring tire pressure and tread depth.

(Xinhua News Agency September 17, 2005)