The FIA Foundation has approved funding for a wide range of road safety projects in countries as diverse as Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Japan and Kenya, as well as approving funding for programmes that will encompass the whole of the Europe region.
Projects in the latest round of FIA Foundation granting will cover a wide range of road safety issues and will include, for example, the development of an educational road safety handbook for primary school children in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a seat belt awareness campaign in Peru based on the successful Costa Rican campaign; and the further development of an international road safety website based in the US.
As well as road safety projects the foundation is also supporting projects with an environmental focus such as the carbon sequestration programme in Chiapas, Mexico, which is managed by Edinburgh Climate Change Management (ECCM); the development of an Eco Drive Toolkit by the Japanese Automobile Federation (JAF) which will provide driving instructors and drivers with information on fuel efficient driving; the continuation of the ADAC’s car emission testing programme ECO Test; and the Partnership for Cleaner Fuels and Vehicles which plays an important role in raising awareness amongst governments and motorists about cleaner fuel technologies.
The Foundation will also continue to support IRAP, the International Road Assessment Programme cited by the European Commission as one of the cornerstones of its road safety strategy. IRAP is in continual development and with FIA Foundation funding, hopes to develop a role of adviser and validator of new build road schemes in middle and low income countries.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), already a beneficiary of FIA Foundation funding for its five year strategy for road injury traffic prevention, will continue to receive funding to develop the programme which will enable WHO to continue supporting projects in a number of countries including Mexico, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Poland and Vietnam. With FIA Foundation funding WHO and the UN have been able to develop coordinated road safety strategies creating the space on the international political agenda for road safety.
The Foundation is also providing support to the UN to facilitate continued cooperation between regional commissions on road safety. Funding will also enable work to begin on developing plans for a UN road safety week in 2007, focused, at the suggestion of the FIA Foundation, on young road users.