l-r David Strickland, Head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and David Ward
The FIA Foundation has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to collaborate on road safety in Latin America and the Caribbean. The region has the world’s highest per capita fatality rate from road crashes at 26 per 100,000 and this is forecast to rise above 30 per 100,000 by 2020. In addition, road crashes are the leading cause of death among the region’s youth.
Agustin Aguerre, the IDB’s Infrastructure and Environment Manager, and David Ward, the FIA Foundation’s Director General, met in Washington, DC, in January to sign the agreement and to discuss possible joint projects for the Decade of Action on Road Safety. One of the first cooperative efforts will be to support a new automobile crash test program for the region, Latin American New Car Assessment Program (LANCAP) which is modelled on the highly successful European New Car Assessment Programme (EuroNCAP) and will address the difference in safety performance of car models sold in Europe compared with those in Latin America.
Commenting on the MoU, David Ward said: "The FIA Foundation is very proud to be working with the IDB and delighted that the Bank’s President Luis Alberto Moreno is taking a strong personal interest in tackling road safety in the Latin American region. The increased involvement of the Bank in road injury prevention is a very positive outcome of the recent Moscow Ministerial Conference on Global Road Safety”.
While in Washington, David Ward held a number of meetings to follow up the Moscow Ministerial. He made a presentation to the Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting on the proposed Decade of Action and held meetings at the World Bank. Accompanied by Dr. Bella Dinh-Zarr, the Foundation’s Road Safety Director, David Ward also met with David Strickland, the newly appointed head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and their key staff to discuss the U.S. DOT’s involvement in global road safety activities.