CIVITAS at the Road Safety Conference 2011
The European Road Safety Charter awards ceremony was held 1 February 2011 in Brussels with great success. With an attendee number of more than 250 people, the awards ceremony was a unique occasion for all types of stakeholders to exchange ideas and share knowledge on road safety related issues. During the ceremony, three workshops were held simultaneously, which dealt with issues related to international road safety activities in the decade to come, such as occupational road safety and ways of improving vulnerable user’s road safety in the city, including best practices from the CIVITAS Initiative.
The Workshop “Road safety in the city” was focused on improving the most vulnerable users´ road safety in the city. The event was moderated by Maria Bercetche, from P.A.U. Education who opened the discussion presenting the speakers and inviting everyone for an interactive debate and exchange of opinions.The first speaker Mr Fred Dotter, Senior Project Manager at Austrian Mobility Research FGM-AMOR presented an overview of the CIVITAS Initiative, emphasizing the importance of clean and sustainable urban transport. He gave examples of European cities which are part of the initiative, like the city of Malmö and the city of Venice, that have reached a significant improvement of road safety though stimulating cycling and walking as a method of including vulnerable groups (pedestrians, cyclists, etc.).Ms Elke Weiss from Austrian Mobility Research presented a concrete case of CIVITAS´ actions in the city of Graz, Austria, namely bicycle training for children in real traffic. She talked about the European, national, regional and local dimensions of road safety activities and gave an example with one of the sections of Graz´ road safety program - ´Traffic Education´ and its ´We live here´ campaign, where the concept of shared space is a key element to improving drivers´ perception of vulnerable users.The two presentations were followed by a Question & Answer session where the audience demonstrated an interest in the CIVITAS Forum Network as a possible platform for exchanging successful approaches to road safety from different cities. There was a suggestion from one participant that education software would also be a very useful part of road safety initiatives for children.The next speaker Mr Tony Pearce, Senior Adviser, gave an inside view of the Trans- European Transport Network TEN-T road safety project in the city of Lvov, Ukraine. He talked about the remarkable success that was achieved throughout this project, lowering traffic casualties in the city by 60%. In a reply to a question about the challenges he faced while working in Lvov, he stated that once the local stake holders (City Council, Police) were involved in the project, it was not of a great difficulty to accomplish successful results.The last speech was given by Mr Lars Olofsson, from the Streets and Parks Department of the city of Malmö, Sweden. He presented the road safety project ´Vision Zero´ launched in 1997, which aims at zero casualties and injuries in traffic accidents in the city of Malmö. In a response to a question about the place of senior citizens as a vulnerable group, he said that they are also included in the city’s road safety policies and initiatives with special emphasis on elderly women.The workshop was summed up with ideas about the future of road safety in Europe, where Mr Pearce concluded that the road should speak to the users and there is a great importance in stimulating self-enforcing attitudes through approaches like mixed use areas. Ms Weiss called for a combination of sustainability and road safety and Mr Dotter added that there is a need for the implementation not just of road safety measures, but combined packages of policies, as this approach is a main key success within the CIVITAS Initiative.More information on the European Road Safety Charter can be found at www.erscharter.eu.
Author: Fred DOTTER
