We get a report back from the 2024 National Road Safety Conference (NRSC) from Ian Edwards, a road safety consultant who delivered a presentation.
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Ian Edwards was in conversation with Craig Thomas
The 2024 conference, organised by Road Safety GB (RSGB) and now in its 15th year, took place in early November, featuring presentations by and for road safety professionals from the UK and abroad.
“I presented on how RSGB developed a Safe Systems course, a project I worked on as a consultant. We undertook the work in a number of stages, including a literature review, focus groups with members and a membership survey,” explains Edwards, who gave his impressions of what seems to have been a highly successful event.
“Now that we're starting to build the course, one of the high points for me at the conference was just being able to speak to people. We want to film some talking head videos for the course, so I managed to make quite a few contacts to see if they'd be willing to participate.”
“The thing with Safe Systems is the broad, overarching headings, so there were experts from a wide range of disciplines who made a valuable input. And the Minister [Lilian Greenwood] also mentioned Safe Systems in their speech, because increasingly organisations are trying to adopt the Safe Systems philosophy, putting it into place in their approach,” says Edwards.
“It's very easy to talk about it, but it's much harder to implement, particularly because it doesn’t rely on outcome measures such as killed and serious injury data. You measure things that will give an indication of things improving, rather than just trying to adjust things after they've happened, so safe systems have a very strong focus on proactive safety performance indicators.
“Safe systems [are] a way that organisations are going to implement and work towards their Vision Zero goals, but it will only work if there's clear government strategy and targets. The Minister also mentioned at the conference that there was going to be a clear government strategy. Hopefully that will materialise soon.”
It’s clear that the NRSC has grown considerably over its many years of existence, to the extent that it even has a fringe event. This means that attendees had plenty of opportunity to follow their specialisms or interests.
Edwards found there was plenty to discuss. “New technology was an interesting thread through the conference. I saw some great presentations on intelligent speed assistance, how collecting more data could lead to it being used more meaningfully, and one fascinating one about near-miss events,” he concludes.
“I thought the conference covered a good broad selection of topics, with something for pretty much everybody who attended. It's increasingly becoming more of a stage where academics are beginning to attend this conference much more.”
Download CIHT’s ‘Progressing the UK towards Safe System implementation’ report.
Image: UK speed sign painted on road; credit: Shutterstock.
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