A session at the 2024 National Road Safety Conference will look at the ‘virtuous circle’ through which safety improvements result in more active travel, with reduced casualties and additional benefits such as enhanced air quality and fitter, healthier communities.
The 2024 edition of the National Road Safety Conference will be held at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel on the NEC complex, on 6-7 November.
The event is organised by Road Safety GB and co-sponsored by Jenoptik, National Highways, Transport for West Midlands and Westcotec.
The active travel session, which forms part of the Main conference programme, features four presentations.
Simon Bradshaw, cycling road safety manager at Cycling Scotland, will share research on the Highway Code.
In 2023/24, Cycling Scotland received funding through Transport Scotland’s Road Safety Evaluation Fund to test public understanding of hazard awareness relating to vulnerable road users, especially people walking, wheeling and cycling.
The evaluation was based on two distinct activities: a population sample survey targeted at people with regular driving experience and an analysis of road-user behaviour at four identified junction sites in Glasgow and Edinburgh through video data collection.
The data highlighted a range of key insights. For example, 75% of drivers say they know the Highway Code well, but the majority had not read the Code in more than 10 years.
Also participating in the session is Alexander Pazuchanics, head of policy and partnerships at Vianova.
Alexander’s presentation will delve into the intersection of active travel initiatives and road safety, exploring how promoting walking and cycling can contribute to safer roads, improved community health, and reduced environmental impact.
Drawing from case studies and best practices, it will discuss strategies for integrating active travel into comprehensive road safety plans.
In a joint presentation, Darren Divall (Transport for West Midlands) and Shane Foley (VivaCity) will look at how Transport for West Midlands is boosting road safety using ground breaking near miss data and technology.
The project uses state-of-the-art Ai-powered computer vision technology featuring ‘near miss’ detection to help the authority better understand and analyse proactively incident hotspots, and reduce KSIs in West Midlands.
Darren and Shane will share findings and results on the project.
They will also share insights about how this innovative near miss data can support evidence based decision making, plug the gap in missing KSI data, and how it has the potential to change funding structures at DfT to provide the opportunity for funding to be awarded based on innovative tech and data use – positively shaping the future of road safety programmes for good.
And finally, Josh Grantham, (Camcycle) and Margaret Winchcomb (PACTS) will deliver a presentation titled: ‘The power of community: the Cambridge effect’.
CamCycle has been working in the city of Cambridge for nearly 30 years for more, better and, most importantly, safer cycling.
Their work has played no small part in the city, once again, being given the accolade of the UK’s leading city region for walking and cycling.
The agenda for NRSC 2024 comprises a Main conference programme, Fringe programme and a series of workshops. In total, it will consist of more than 60 sessions covering a multitude of topics.
More than 200 people have already registered to attend the conference, and 24 organisations have signed up to participate in the exhibition which runs alongside it.
- Click here for costs to attend and/or book a delegate place.
- Click here for costs to exhibit and/or book a slot at the exhibition.
For more information about the conference contact Nick Rawlings by email.
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