DEKRA Presents Road Safety Report 2016 in Madrid
In October, the expert organization DEKRA presented this year's Road Safety Report for the first time in Spain at the Ateneo de Madrid cultural institute in front of approximately 100 guests. Among the guests, were numerous notable speakers on road safety, including Pablo Casado, president of the Spanish commission for road safety and sustainable mobility. After the opening by Nicolas Bouvier, Managing Director of DEKRA Automotive SA, a role in which he is responsible for the markets in France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco, the necessity of intensifying efforts to increase road safety was emphasized. These efforts need to be boosted in order to achieve the European Commission's stated goal for 2020 to halve the number of people killed in road accidents compared with 2010.
"Road safety is an issue which DEKRA has dealt with since it was founded over 90 years ago. This concerns not only the work of institutions or companies, but also of every individual who can, and should, contribute to increasing safety on the roads in their daily life," said Yvonne Rauh, Country Manager for DEKRA Spain. In this context, the road safety report is also a valuable instrument which shows solutions and, at the same time, is an advisor for political, road, and infrastructure experts, manufacturers, scientific institutions, associations, and all road users.
The presentation took place in a conference, which was held by DEKRA with two partners: Etrasa, which, by its own account, is the Spanish market leader in the area of reference materials for driving schools and training materials for professional drivers and Moving, a federation of European traffic publishers and companies working professionally in the field of road safety education. The conference was divided into different blocks, according to the topics which the report is also based on: the human factor, vehicle technology, and infrastructure. The high number of accidents caused by human error, the potential of driver assistance systems in preventing traffic accidents and the necessary optimization of infrastructure were some of the topics discussed at the session.