Asia Road Safety 2017 – Wrap Up
Manila, Philippines was the host city for the road safety conference ‘Road Safety in Asia 2017’, our 10th annual event in the region. Jointly presented by the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) and International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP), the 2-day event designed to investigate ways to scale up to save lives across Asia saw close to 200 participants from a dozen countries come together including:
- senior government officials, from road safety, transport, health, police and education;
- engineers and representatives from transport authorities and motoring clubs;
- road safety researchers and experts;
- representatives of NGOs working in road safety in the region;
- key business representatives with an interest in road safety.
The CEOs of GRSP and iRAP, Dave Cliff and Rob McInerney respectively, opened the programme with a collective call to action. Participants then benefited from highly insightful presentations from Mr Oscar P. Palabyab, Secretary General of Philippines Red Cross, the Honourable JV Ejercito, Senator and Chair of the Senate Committee on Health and Demography, and the Honourable Cesar Sarmiento, Congressman and Chair of the Philippine Congress Committee on Transportation.
The World Health Organization presented detail into their newly released Save LIVES package which provides countries with an easy and implementable priority list of actions to assist meeting UN SDG targets and a lively panel looked at elements of the Safe System. A three-stream, concurrent programme of interactive workshops took participants deep-diving into a range of key topics, including:
- Infrastructure – from projects to upgraded roads
- The importance of standards – helmets and child restraints
- Embedding innovation into programmes
- Infrastructure – from projects to programmes
- Policy advocacy and implementation
- The roles of private sector and civil society in road safety
Local and international media covered the event which saw participants leave with new ideas and renewed passion to take back to their respective countries and organizations.
In his closing remarks, Dave Cliff stressed the importance of sharing knowledge and experiences, and through charming allegory, encouraged all participants to embrace the opportunities that an event such as this provides, to pause, take stock of the current situation, consider the most appropriate next steps, and then move forward with purpose.
GRSP and iRAP’s regional events have become flagship events on the road safety calendar. Since 2007, more than 2300 road safety practitioners from over 50 countries have gathered to share knowledge and professional experiences, discuss successes and challenges, showcase good practice and build strong regional networks where previously few existed.
Photos, videos and presentations from the event will be on line here soon.
