The FIA Foundation held its 2006 annual meeting in Barcelona on 19th October.
More than 100 member clubs of the FIA Foundation attended the meeting, which saw the launch of the Foundation’s 2006 Review. During the meeting, which discussed plans for participating in the Make Roads Safe campaign and the United Nations Global Road Safety Week, the FIA Foundation’s Chairman, Rosario Alessi, commented:
“It has been a year in which our past activities have been recognised and rewarded. I was very proud to receive from Prince Michael of Kent his International Road Safety Award for the FIA Foundation’s seat belt toolkit. The prize was presented on the occasion of the FIA Foundation hosting a meeting of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration and launching a new Global Road Safety funding Facility in partnership with the World Bank.
Another FIA Foundation-supported project, the Por Amor seat belt campaign in Costa Rica, was also the recipient of a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award. This award was presented by the Prince to the Automobile Club of Costa Rica and to the Costa Rican Government, during a highly successful Latin American Road Safety Forum in San Jose last month. This Forum agreed a strong declaration for action on road safety in the region, endorsed by the President of Costa Rica.
This year more than 40 of our member clubs have taken part in the Think Before You Drive campaign, in partnership with Bridgestone and the FIA Foundation, bringing the total number of participating clubs to more than 60. From Europe to the Middle East, through Africa, Asia and the Pacific region and now in Latin America, this has been a truly global effort. It has been a powerful example of how we can all work together on a common theme and activity, in this case promoting life saving road safety messages. Many of the national campaigns have been very impressive, involving the traffic police, government departments and other social and corporate partners, and communicating the messages to a very wide public and media audience.
We will have the opportunity to work on new campaigns in the coming year. In Europe, the FIA Foundation has been asked by the European Commission to lead a Communications Platform to promote electronic safety systems, beginning with electronic stability control. I launched this e-Safety Aware initiative together with European Commissioner Viviane Reding a few weeks ago. It is clear that not enough people know about the safety benefits of electronic stability control, and market penetration is very slow. The European Commission recognises that automobile clubs have a key role to play in raising both consumer awareness and industry responsiveness in order to accelerate use of this life saving technology.
The FIA Foundation has also set an ambitious policy agenda for global road safety. This year we established the high level Commission for Global Road Safety, led by Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, which in June published the Make Roads Safe report. This report calls for increased international funding and political commitment for action on road safety. The FIA Foundation has now launched a Make Roads Safe campaign and we encourage all of you to support this important effort during 2007.
Click here to download Review 2006 >