Excellence in Road Safety Awards 2023
Our annual Excellence in Road Safety Awards took place in Brussels and online on Thursday 19 October 2023. Thank you to everyone who submitted an application and supported our ceremony.
A recording of the event can be viewed here
Our awards recognise the contributions of our members towards the shared goal of improved road safety across Europe. This year, there were five award categories:
- Fitness to drive
- Reduced mobility
- Data
- E-commerce
- Urban road safety
The winning initiatives are examples of where organisations have delivered specific and measurable road safety actions to benefit their communities.
Introducing the 2023 winners:
- Zavarovalnica Triglav and AMZS (Slovenia) – Refreshing rides for seniors with instructor
- VZW Symfoon (Belgium) – for their obstacle-free pavements with Team Trottoir
- Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) (Austria) - for their Mobility Observation Box (MOB)
- An Post (Ireland) – for their Driving towards Zero campaign
- Municipality of Gdańsk (Poland) – for their traffic calming activities and campaigns
Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) (Austria) was chosen by the audience at the awards ceremony (Thursday 19 October 2023) to receive the Jacques Barrot Award. This special public choice prize has been awarded every year since 2016 to one of the winners and is dedicated to Jacques Barrot, a former European Commissioner for Transport.
Adina Vălean, European Commissioner for Transport “The Excellence in Road Safety Awards is an opportunity to reward the best practices, to reward the hard work that all of you have been doing on a daily basis and to raise awareness of this effective project in Europe and beyond."
Fitness to Drive
Zavarovalnica Triglav and AMZS from Slovenia created an awareness campaign aimed at seniors. Slovenia has many small and remote villages unreachable by public transport. Senior road users rely on cars for autonomy, mobility and social inclusion. Zavarovalnica Triglav and AMZS developed a free programme to refresh senior road users’ knowledge and driving skills to keep their journey as safe as possible. They created an awareness campaign that highlighted the importance of fitness to drive via a dedicated website, ambassadors, video content and tv shows. Together with this campaign, they developed a platform where senior drivers can improve their knowledge of road safety regulations and book a free refresher ride with an instructor. Participants then receive personalised feedback on their performance and tips on maintaining and improving their skills.
65,500 senior drivers refreshed their knowledge via the platform, and 700 took a ride with an instructor. A survey showed that there was an increase of 14% in the perception of the importance of refreshing driving skills. If you’d like to know more, watch the video below or click here for more information.
Reduced Mobility
VZW Symfoon from Belgium recognised that daily objects on pavement such as e-scooters, bicycles, garbage bins and signposts, can transform into dangerous obstacles for vision-impaired road users. Symfoon developed a physical and digital awareness campaign to guide all road users on how they can help create a safer environment for everyone. They created four light-hearted videos where blind pedestrians start their journey as a sports competition, but unfortunately, they cannot reach the finish line due to many obstacles on the road. In addition to the videos, they made stickers with a QR code that were placed on obstacles in multiple cities and municipalities. Via the QR code, the owners of the obstacles could discover more information. While placing the stickers, the members of Symfoon, often vision-impaired themselves, started open discussions with the local citizens about the topic. The obstacles with stickers were highlighted on their social media channels, encouraging everyone to do the same. The Flemish road safety minister was invited for a walk blindfolded in Brussels, and the road safety minister was invited for a walk blindfolded in Brussels, giving the campaign national exposure.
They placed over 10,000 stickers and reached over 28,000 people on social media. If you’d like to know more, watch the video below or click here for more information.
Data
Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) from Austria understands the importance of analysing the behaviour and activity at specific infrastructural sections of roads, which can inform authorities and ultimately protect road users. Data collection is often by hand and only captures a small window of activity, and police reports are often insufficient to analyse road users' behaviour. As a result, The Mobility Observation Box (MOB) is an image sensor-based box that makes it possible to measure the safety of transport infrastructures according to objective criteria. Once the data collection is done, machine learning algorithms automatically recognise different groups of road users (pedestrians, cyclists, cars, trucks, e-scooters, etc.), detect them, evaluate the traffic behaviour using surrogate safety measures and provide a basis for targeted safety measures. The battery of the box can collect data for up to 14 consecutive days, and due to its small size, it can be placed without distracting or influencing the road users.
If you’d like to know more, watch the video below or click here for more information.
E-Commerce
An Post, the Irish postal service, delivers to over 2 million addresses on a daily basis. To improve the safety of their drivers and other road users, they developed a safety guide for their light commercial vehicle fleet. It contains information and tips on road safety legislation, driver behaviour, adverse weather, and violence on the road. Together with this guide, they also created an app to share information on road safety, offered training programmes for drivers of heavy goods vehicles, enhanced their transport safety audits, made safety videos, and developed an internal awareness campaign on the dangers of vehicles rolling away due to incorrectly engaged handbrakes.
Their actions were successful: the number of road traffic accidents dropped by 60% in two years’ time, and the number of injuries decreased from 42 to 4. Speeding was reduced by 77%, and 1.5 million euros in fuel costs were avoided because of better fleet efficiencies.
If you’d like to know more, watch the video below or click here for more information.
Urban Road Safety
Municipality of Gdańsk in Poland decided in 2010 to develop the Gdańsk Traffic Calming Programme 2016-2030 to help achieve Vision Zero. The programme has a specific focus on improving the coexistence of pedestrians, cyclists and drivers and the safety of road users in vulnerable situations. One important step in this process was the implementation of 30km/h as the standard speed in the city. Together with this implementation, they introduced infrastructure changes such as elevated crossings, mini roundabouts, and one-way streets. If possible, pedestrian crossings were replaced with footbridges and tunnels. Local communities had the opportunity to participate in the programme via questionnaires on the safety of school areas and the implementation of local projects created and chosen by the citizens. The city developed multiple safety education activities and campaigns for children.
Between 2009 and 2022, the city witnessed a decrease of 76% in the number of fatalities, 47% in the number of injuries and 44% in the number of road crashes. 62% fewer crashes were reported involving pedestrians, and in 2022, no cyclists died on the road.
If you’d like to know more, watch the video below or click here for more information.
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