Keynote speakers at the Forum included Mark Rosenberg, Executive Director of the Taskforce for Child Survival, and Martin Eichelberger, the Founder and President of SAFEKIDS Worldwide. Both called for greater international action to prevent an epidemic of road traffic casualties amongst children, described by Dr Rosenberg as ‘a perfect plague’. Another keynote speaker, Kate McMahon from the UK Department for Transport, presented the findings of her OECD working group’s report on strategies for reducing child deaths and injuries on the roads. More than 180,000 children are killed on the world’s road every year, the vast majority in the developing world.
Technical sessions on child restraint systems, the role of road design and vehicle technologies heard from speakers from Honda, Toyota and Britax, as well as from Euro RAP, the independent road assessment programme backed by the FIA Foundation. An expert panel also discussed the role of education in empowering children to stay safe on the roads. Rohit Baluja, President of the Indian Road Traffic Education organisation, explained the scale of the road safety problem in India, and the vital role his organisation is playing in educating the educators: training teachers to explain road safety skills to children.
The International Policy Forum was hosted by the Austrian automobile club, OEAMTC, in the town of Baden, near Vienna. It brought together representatives of automobile clubs from across the world in the first of the annual policy events organised by the FIA Foundation. Policy experts from automobile clubs from the US, Australia, South Africa, Austria, UK and Germany participated in the panel sessions.