October and November workshops push forward the TRACECA Road Safety II project

The sub-regional workshops ‘Road safety fundamentals and interventions’ organized in the framework of the TRACECA Road Safety II project, funded by the European Union, were held in Chisinau, Tbilisi and Almaty between October 22nd and November 5th 2014.

Led by the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) and  Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport (EASST) and their sub-regional partners the Automobile Club of Moldova, the Georgian Red Cross and the Red Crescent of Kazakhstan, the workshops brought together representatives from governmental agencies (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Health, Education, Transport),  civil society organizations and private enterprises from nine of the TRACECA beneficiary countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan), in total involving 118 participants.

The three-day workshops focused on improving participant knowledge about the risk factors approach and the value of implementing evidence-based and data-led  interventions. The objectives of the workshops were:

• To help participants to constitute multi-sectorial and multidisciplinary sub-regional and national working groups with a common vision in road safety.
• To assess and improve the knowledge of participants on the main risk factors linked to road traffic crashes.
• To assess and improve content expertise in the design of feasible evidence-based small-scale pilot projects targeting specific risk factors.
• To impart knowledge on how to design and implement effective public awareness campaigns and school-based educational programmes.

Some of the proposed small-scale in-country pilot projects to be implemented during the next 12 months include impaired driving of taxi drivers in Yerevan; safety for pedestrians targeted on children in centrals areas of Chisinau and Tbilisi; walking buses in a socially disadvantaged school in Central Baku, and speed control on a high risk artery in Almaty.

The workshops launched a series of activities to be implemented by the GRSP and a consortium of partners as part of the TRACECA Road Safety II project which aims to reduce road crashes and trauma by building regional and national partnership between stakeholders in these countries and by strengthening capacity building through the design and implementation of pilot community-based interventions.