World Day of Remembrance for road traffic victims - 15.11.2020 ROADPOL supports the 25th WDoR with a video message of his President Volker Orben. For more information visit https://worlddayofremembrance.org/ and see #WDR2020 and @WDRemembrance
Due to the Corona situation the scheduled ROADPOL Conference in March 2020 had to be cancelled. We all had the hope to meet each other in Germany in September 2020 to hold the first ROADPOL elections. But again this conference had to be cancelled too. For the first time, the meetings of the Operational Working Group and the Council were held digitally. This posed particular challenges as elections were to be held for the first time.
Not everything worked perfectly. Some members were unable to attend for various technical reasons or holidays. But in the end 23 members came together and elected the new ROADPOL Council for the first time.
The conference started with the digital meeting of the Operational Working Group (OPG) on 14 September.
After the former Chair of OPG, Egbert-Jan van Hasselt, had left due to his retirement, the members elected Marijke Eskes (Netherlands) as their new Chair of OPG by an overwhelming majority of 96%.
Marijke ESKES has been Vice-Chair of OPG since the days of TISPOL and is highly respected in the ROADPOL family. By her election Marijke automatically becomes a member of the ROADPOL Executive Committee according to ROADPOL's statutes.
OPG had an exchange of views on the impact of the Corona virus on traffic police work.
Then the members adopted the Wallplanner 2021 with all dates for the planned ROADPOL operations 2021.
On Tuesday 15 September, the ROADPOL Council met for the first time, also virtually.
The elections of the ROADPOL Executive Committee were on the agenda. According to the statutes, the TISPOL Executive Committee, elected in 2019, had continued its work in the newly established ROADPOL until the first official ROADPOL elections.
First of all, the members expressed their confidence in Volker Orben and elected him unanimously as the new ROADPOL President. Volker Orben (Germany) had taken on the difficult task of transforming the former TISPOL Network into a new independent association, ROADPOL e.V.
Sanja Veic (Croatia) was elected as Vice-President
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
“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?”
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.