CEPOL Road Safety Awareness Seminar

‘Road Safety Awareness’ was the subject of CEPOL seminar 38/2009. Held in Germany on 30 June - 02 July 2009, the aims of the seminar were to improve the knowledge of participants on traffic safety issues and European best practice examples, to recognise current developments and future challenges in applying new European traffic safety concepts in accordance with the implementation of a 4th European Road Safety Action Programme for the years 2010-2020.

Seventeen participants from 12 Member States and lecturers from Portugal, Germany and Switzerland took part in the seminar.

The first day of the seminar was dedicated to the participants’ presentation of the current road safety situation in their respective countries and the European road safety situation, with a special focus on the European Traffic Police Network’s (TISPOL) Life Safer Project, presented by Chief Inspector Michaela Tempelmann. Major Joao da Silva of the Portuguese Guarda Nacional Republicana provided an insight into Portuguese road safety strategies.

Emphasis on the second day was on the ‘High Risk Groups of Young Drivers’, represented by the Guardian Angel Project (Chief Inspector Andreas Bensch, and Councilman Willem Wachter), ‘Motorcyclists’ (Chief Inspector Peter Hübner) and ‘Pedestrians’. There was also a field study visit to the Integrated Traffic Control, organised by Police Director Udo Weiss of the Münster Metropolitan Police.

The third day featured the Swiss approach to the ‘Accident Hotspot Rural Roads’, presented by Peter-Martin Meier, Director of the Swiss Police Institute.

All topics addressed in the seminar focussed on integral Traffic Safety issues currently in discussion en route to the 4th European Road Safety Action Programme 2010-2020 including:

• Vulnerable traffic participants
• High risk group of young drivers
• Motorcyclists
• Rural roads

Martin Mönnighoff, the Head of the Traffic Management Department at the German Police University in Münster, encouraged participants to make use of their CEPOL connections as an interdisciplinary platform for networking and the exchange of best practice examples. He stressed the importance and function of police networking and the development of common policing standards, in the process of reducing traffic casualties throughout Europe.

The seminar organiser, Academic Assistant Guido Kattert, made use of CEPOL´s e-Net to provide participants with pre-course material and the possibility to coordinate their expectations and scientific research, which in this case nurtured dissertation projects for two participants.

The seminar was organised by the German Police University’s Traffic Management Department, in conjunction with Portugal’s Guarda Nacional Republicana.