HUNGARY: Emotional films on road safety

“Last goodbye”– this is the title of one of the latest prevention video clips made by Hungarian police officers at the Accident Prevention Unit in Hajdú-Bihar County.

More video clips and visuals are required to make their work efficient.

In cooperation with professional filmmakers, the police officers from Hajdú-Bihar county already produced four short videos specifically for social media.

The ambulance crew, the fire brigade and police officers were in the centre of the short videos. During the shooting, the filmmakers could experience how a rescue work would proceed, when it runs like clockwork. The well assembled workforce did its duty as if the accidents would be real.

“Last goodbye” is the first video clip in their campaign and within two weeks it has been watched by more than 250.000 road users.

This film presents the idea that no one thinks, when they get in the car and start a journey or make a trip, that this could be the last one. Unfortunately, many drivers still never actually return home. The message of the video clip is: “You don’t leave home thinking you’ll never be back again... do you?”

Volvo Studio Talks - A million more

On October 15, the Italian Traffic Police took part in a special event promoted by Volvo Cars. It is a brand-new format that involves the five existing Volvo Studios: Milan, Stockholm, New York, Tokyo and Warsaw. Based on simultaneous interactions of different Volvo Studios across continents, “Volvo Studio Talks” are cross-cultural and cross-industry conversations on important aspects of road safety. It is a way to promote the dialogue between different entities, based on a simple but strong conviction: only the comparison between different perspectives can create progress, innovation and success.

For the first Volvo Studio Talk, the focus was on the safety of the whole family, especially of children. The plan was to start from the basic rules for safety for the little ones in the car: from each one of the Volvo Studios, a speaker fed the conversation.

Malin Ekholm, the Vice President at Volvo Cars Safety Centre, was at the Volvo Studio in Stockholm and talked about the three big challenges that we have to face today, concerning road safety: distraction, intoxication and speed.

Volvo has introduced the “speed cap” into all its cars from 2021: they are the first car manufacturer to do so. Within the EU all new cars launched from 2022 will have to be equipped with speed limiting equipment (of a lighter version than what Volvo is fitting its cars with).

In the Volvo Studio in Warsaw, Paweł Kurpiewski was the speaker who is an expert on child safety in cars, biomechanics and traffic safety “influencer”.

He provides a service in Poland, where people can drive in and get educated on child safety in cars. He has 450 different car seats and he shows parents to pick the right one for their car and their children as well as how to use the seats properly.

After the presentation of Mr. Kurpiewski, Mr. Russel Henk showed his ideas. He is the program director for “Teens in the Driver Seat” in Texas, USA. His organization encourage teenagers to teach each other how to drive safely in San Antonio, Texas.

Although quite a few people had their doubts about the feasibility of this approach, Mr. Henk disabused the people and showed

 15.11.2020 - WORLD DAY OF REMEMBRANCE

It is 25 years ago this year since a day dedicated to remembering road traffic victims began to be observed internationally – for the first ten years by the European Federation of Road Traffic Victims (FEVR) and its many member organizations, including RoadPeace (UK), who introduced the day in 1995.

With strong support from WHO and UNRSC members, UN Member States adopted UN General Assembly Resolution 60/5 on 26th October 2005, calling for an annual World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims as an “appropriate acknowledgement for victims of road traffic crashes and their families”.

The objectives of WDoR 2020 are to provide a platform for road traffic victims and their families to:

• remember all people killed and seriously injured on the roads;
• acknowledge the crucial work of the emergency services;
• draw attention to the generally trivial legal response to culpable road deaths and injuries
• advocate for better support for road traffic victims and victim families;
• promote evidence-based actions to prevent and eventually stop further road traffic deaths and injuries

From 1995, road victim organisations under the umbrella of the European Federation of Road Traffic Victims (FEVR) observed this Day together – first as European Day of Remembrance, but soon as World Day when NGOs from Africa, South America and Asia joined.

In a short period of time, distraction in road traffic has become one of the most common causes of accidents in recent years. This is why ROADPOL resumed the operation “Focus on the Road" this year.

In the spring of 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic all pan-European controls initiated by ROADPOL were suspended. Traffic checks did not have priority and polices forces were required in different areas.

At the start of the ROADPOL Safety Days and the European Mobility Week, there was some capacity to resume traffic controls. Members started with the controlling of distraction, but unfortunately not all members succeeded in conducting controls".

From 14 to 20 September, 13 countries participated in this operation and checked road users for the prohibited use of mobile phones, other technical devices as well as other forms of distractions.

Although the regulations are different in European countries, in most of them the use of mobile phones without hand-free equipment while driving is forbidden.

The police of the participating countries checked over 41200 road users at more ten 36000 control spots for which there were 71618 different types of violations were found.

14563 drivers used their mobile phones to call or text while driving without a hand-free equipment.

275 drivers used their devices as a navigation system (without hands-free equipment).

14536 drivers were caught by watching TV or DVDs, reading a newspaper or eating while driving (forbidden in Switzerland and Poland as a driver during the transport of people).

These numbers clearly show how important road safety and distraction controls are, as there are still too many drivers distracted by technical equipment instead of paying attention to the road.

The overestimation of one's own driving ability and the wrong assessment of traffic situations are often the reason for serious traffic accidents.

During “Focus on the road” police checked whether drivers and passengers were wearing seatbelts too. 25616 persons didn’t use their seatbelt, which is obviously still a huge safety problem.