Road Safety GB is delighted to announce three board level appointments, including Sam Merison as the organisation’s new vice-chair.
The appointments will formally be announced the 2022 Road Safety GB AGM on 9 November.
In addition to Sam Merison’s appointment, Rhian Hughes is the new director of the Road Safety GB Academy, while Will Cubbin is Road Safety GB’s new director of research.
James Gibson, executive director of Road Safety GB, said: “The Board is very pleased to announce the appointments of Sam, Rhian and Will – and we very much look forward to working with them.
“Sonya Hurt (academy director), Vicky Harvey (vice chair) and Matt Staton (research director) have left their roles to take on new senior national positions with the Road Safety Trust, DfT and National Highways respectively.
“The Board extends its gratitude to them for their hard work and commitment to the organisation, and wishes then the best of luck in their exciting new roles.”
The new appointments
Sam Merison is the road safety manager for both the London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames and Wandsworth Council. He has more than 17 years’ experience of working in road safety within local authorities, predominantly education and training, but more recently on the policy and engineering side as well.
Sam was head of the Road Safety GB Academy between 2013 and 2020, a period which saw the introduction of a suite of courses and framework of training for road safety professionals.
Prior to stepping into the vice-chair role, Sam was a director of the Academy as well as vice-chair of the Road Safety GB London regional group. He will serve a year as vice-chair, before becoming chair in November 2023.
Rhian Hughes is the interim road safety strategy manager for Wirral Council, having spent many years as the authority’s road safety team leader.
In her current role, she has been responsible for restructuring the road safety team to ensure that road safety and safe, sustainable travel are given equal importance.
In 2020, she was named chair of the Merseyside Road Safety Officers Group – nominated by her peers for the role.
Will Cubbin is the manager of the Safer Essex Roads Partnership, a role he has held since July 2022.
From 2014 to 2022, he was the partnership’s strategy analyst, developing the role from a straightforward performance monitoring and data reporting function, to proactively identifying and researching priority areas for road safety activity.
He is the Eastern region ‘champion’ for the RSGB Analysts’ Champions Network.
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