IFRTD participated in the 14th Road Safety Conference

2007-11-28

Held in Bangkok between 14 and 16 November 2007, the 14th International Conference on Road Safety in 4 Continents was organised by the Swedish Institute for National Roads and Transport Research in partnership with the Thai Ministry for Transport and others such as the Global Road Safety Partnership. This year, the themes for the bi-annual conference were: i) to share new findings on road safety; ii) to exchange knowledge on road safety; iii) to share good practice and; iv) road safety - an environmental framework. The conference was a good opportunity for researchers, national road safety experts, policy-makers and others interested in road safety to come together and share experiences through presentations and poster sessions. The presentations covered a total of 15 sub-themes including rural transport safety. For this occasion, IFRTD shared two presentations with the participants: one was the synthesis of the 5 case studies commissioned and presented during the 4th Africa Conference on Road Safety (held in Accrah in February of 2007), and the other was the Indian case study to develop a rural Accident Potential Index. In more detail the presentations focused on:

• Broadening the debate on road safety: the rural transport perspective;
• Quantification of the Accident Potential Index: a case study from Rajastahan, India (this presentation was given by Prof. Ashoke Sarkar, a member of the Rajasthan NFG).

This was a unique opportunity for the Forum to present a new perspective and to share new knowledge on rural transport safety that can contribute to the road safety discourse. The conference also provided an opportunity to present the rural transport safety perspective to a larger research audience in the hope to be able to fill some of the existing knowledge gaps around this theme.

To obtain an English copy of the conference proceedings and the India case study or for more information on the conference itself, please contact :

Ranjith de Silva
E-mail : ranjith.desilva@ifrtd.org
Guy Kemtsop
E-mail : guy.kemtsop@ifrtd.org

To find out more about the joint SSATP and GRSF workshop on road safety management held in Addis Ababa from 28-30 November, click here.