Over two days, 17 and 18 June, delegates gathered for the Society of Road Safety Auditors (SoRSA) Annual Conference 2024 at the Edwardian Hotel, Manchester.

This year’s conference was focused on the main themes of the urban realm, vulnerable road users, safe systems and suicide prevention.

Across the two days, over 170 delegates were treated to a range of talks from experts in the role of road safety and road safety audit. There was plenty of opportunity for delegates to get involved, with interactive workshops, question and answer sessions with speakers and panel discussions.

Day one of conference opened with a welcome address from Eric Hill, Chair of SoRSA, followed by a presentation from Luke Heming of the Metropolitan Police Service. Luke discussed the urban realm and drew on his own experiences from the past 12 years, where he has been working to reduce road deaths.

Dr Suzy Charman of the Road Safety Foundation (RSF) delivered a workshop focused on the Safe Systems Approach. Suzy detailed the training and tools provided by RSF that seek to help road authorities to unpack the realities of trying to implement a safe system. 

The opening day concluded with the SoRSA Annual General Meeting 2024 and an evening dinner, providing the opportunity to network and meet colleagues from across the sector.

Eric Hill, Chair of SoRSA

Reflecting on the conference, Eric, said: “It is always a relief and a pleasure to see a well-attended conference and it is the delegates who put the “icing on the cake” for the event with their willingness to network, ask questions, challenge opinion and show appreciation for the speakers and the small band of people who make all the things come together on the day.”

“A lot of hard work went into this years conference as per previous years and I would single out particular praise for Richard Pearson our Vice Chair for his enthusiasm putting the programme together and Libby Sands who was busy in the background organising the venue and all of us."

"I’m also very appreciative of the work done at CIHT and the assistance received from Chris Flattery and William Martin in liaising with the venue and providing essential assistance. We also had an excellent selection of speakers and I would thank them for giving up their time to be part of our conference.”

“Now we start our plans for next year and we are always interested to know if there are any particular themes our members would like to be covered, speakers they would like to hear or indeed if they wish to offer their services as a speaker.”

Awards

Day two began with a welcome address from, Karen McShane, President of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation.

Kate Carpenter and Alan Rookes were given awards of Honourary Fellow of SoRSA.

Kate has done outstanding work for many years on road safety and Alan is a past Chair and Honourary Secretary of SoRSA, with a life long career in road safety.

Kate then delivered the opening paper of day two, with the first theme of the day focused on ‘General Road Users’. Paper one delved into Smart Motorways, looking at what we know about safety and the present and future of Smart Motorways. 

Paper 2 was presented by Dr Alex Stedmon discussing Prime Road Markings, Alex’s work investigating new road markings earned the Prince Michael International Road Safety Award in 2023.

The second theme of the morning session was ‘Safe Systems’. Panagiotis Chiotis, who’s work focusses on developing and delivering comprehensive geospatial solutions, opened this session with paper 3 with a talk on the Transport Scotland route scoring system. Concluding the morning session was a look at the Safe Systems Approach in paper 4, delivered by Dr Claire Williams, a Human Factors Specialist.

After lunch, the theme for the first half of the afternoon was ‘The urban realm’. Natasha Hartke presented paper 5 discussing Kerbside Strategy, drawing on her work at Lambeth Council where she has led on the delivery of their award-winning strategy. Malcolm Hall delivered paper 6 with Connecting Woodside (Glasgow) Road Safety Audits. As the Project Manager for the Connecting Woodside project, Malcom been responsible for the design and delivery of this award-winning project.

The final theme of the conference was ‘Suicide Prevention’, with Nicola Tweedie delivering paper 7 on Suicide prevention in the RSA Standard. Nicola has worked on the development of new insight into road related suicides and on the creation of the National Highways Suicide Prevention Toolkit. Conference concluded with a speaker panel question session, joining speakers were SoRSA committee members and road safety experts Dennis Symons and Miguel-Angel Serrano Santos.

Get involved

If you have any suggestion or ideas for next year’s conference or would like to learn more about SoRSA, please contact: sorsa@ciht.org.uk 

To find out more about SoRSA click here. 

If you are interested in becoming a member, take a look at our membership options: CIHT Membership.