Polis and 'Safer City Streets' cooperate for safer roads

Every minute, a person is killed in a road crash world-wide (OECD). For every person killed in the EU, five times as many suffer serious injuries with life-changing consequences (European Commission). Vulnerable road users in urban areas are especially affected. More efforts to save lives are needed and cities play a central role in improving the safety of pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, young and older road users.

The Polis-ITF cooperation focuses on road safety data collection, including information on crashes, injuries and fatalities. Today’s joint workshop addresses collaboration with hospitals to improve knowledge on crashes in Barcelona and motorcyclists’ behaviour in London. The International Transport Forum (ITF) is hosting the meeting.

Both networks held targeted working group meetings prior to the joint workshop. Polis focused on road safety and active travel, including lessons learnt in Barcelona, Budapest, London, Paris and Rome. The new European target to reduce serious injuries was addressed and participants discussed what a European strategy to protect pedestrians and cyclists could look like.

Cities welcome this reinforced cooperation between Polis and ITF: “Cities want to learn from each other to make urban roads around the world safer for people”, says Dora Ramazzotti from the city of Bologna who chairs Polis’ Road Safety Working Group. “Having a platform to openly exchange best practices - and in fact also less successful practices! - is vital for our work. We are glad that two important platforms, Polis and the ITF’s Safer City Streets, work together to help cities make progress on road safety challenges.”

Road safety data knowledge is crucial to develop effective policies and choose the most appropriate interventions to make roads safer. Reliable road safety statistics also allow benchmarking and therefore setting road safety targets and milestones. While considerable progress has been made concerning the benchmarking of road safety at national level, efforts to reach the same level of scale and depth for cities are yet to be made. ‘Safer City Streets’ contributes by collecting and analysing road safety data from cities in a dedicated database.

END

Notes to editors:

Safer City Streets is the International Transport Forum’s global traffic safety network for cities. Safer city Streets helps cities to improve their urban road safety performance by sharing data, experiences and knowledge – by learning from each other. Currently, 38 cities are taking part in Safer City Streets. The network is managed by the International Transport Forum (ITF). http://www.itf-oecd.org/safer-city-streets
Polis is the network of cities and regions working together to achieve more sustainable urban mobility. Currently, 69 cities and regions are members of the network and Rotterdam is the current Polis president. One of Polis’ thematic working groups focuses on road safety in cities. Polis has a permanent secretariat located in Brussels. www.polisnetwork.eu

Contact Polis:

Dagmar Köhler, Polis Communication Manager, dkoehler@polisnetwork.eu, +32 2 500 56 72

Back to news