National Conference: the final pieces in the jigsaw

The finishing touches have now been applied to the agenda for the 2013 National Road Safety Conference and everything is now in place for the event.

The conference is being held in Harrogate, 13-14 November. It is being hosted by Road Safety GB Yorkshire & Humber Region and is sponsored by Colas, AA DriveTech and FirstCar.

254 people attended in 2012 and the number of attendees this year is again nudging 250. There is still time for people to book to attend on a day delegate basis, and possibly as a residential delegate, subject to confirmation by the organisers.

Chief Fire Officer Dave Etheridge (pictured above), chair of the CFOA road safety executive board, will present during the opening session. Dave will use his presentation to outline an important new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which sets out how CFOA and Road Safety GB will work together nationally, regionally and locally.

In the young driver session on the morning of 14 November, Lisa Gilmour from the DfT will give an update on progress with regard to the Government’s young driver Green Paper.

In the final session on the afternoon of 14 November, Graham Titchener and Kathryn Mackay (pictured opposite), Cycle Yorkshire regional director and City of York Council road safety project officer respectively, will look at the next big cycling event to stir the nation: the Tour de France, Grand Depart from Yorkshire in July 2014. The duo will expand on initiatives to “get Yorkshire cycling” including a project to create an app to raise awareness of the challenges of rural riding.

The final conference presentation will be delivered by the Kirklees Road Safety Champions (picture below). The Champions’ mission is to reduce the number of young people injured on Kirklees’ roads by passing on important messages about road safety to their peers.

Road Safety GB will be running a live Twitter feed throughout the conference and a series of ‘live’ reports from the conference will also be published on this newsfeed during the event.

Anyone interested in attending, but who has not yet booked, should contact the conference administrator Sally Bartrum as soon as possible on 01379 650112.