Representatives from the Road Safety GB management team have today (20 Mar) had a ‘productive’ meeting with a delegation from the Republic of Korea (South Korea) to discuss road safety.
The meeting was the result of an approach by the South Korean Embassy for information about how casualty reduction is approached and handled in the UK.
The Korean government is particularly interested in UK road safety policies and strategies, how casualty issues are identified and the methods deployed to address them.
With the help of its membership, Road Safety GB prepared a briefing paper for the Korean government and the purpose of the meeting was to elaborate on the detail.
Sonya Hurt and Alan Kennedy – Road Safety GB chair and business and operations manager respectively – met with Mr Soon Do Jung, head of department of traffic safety, Mr Cheol Seung Hyun, director of traffic enforcement equipment and Mr Yong Man Kim, manager of traffic enforcement equipment.
Sonya Hurt said: “We were honoured to be invited to meet the delegation from the Republic of Korea. Road casualties are a global problem and we are happy to share our experience and expertise with other countries.
“We are fortunate that Road Safety GB contains such a wealth of knowledge and expertise that we are able to respond quickly to this sort of request.
“The meeting was productive and we were able cover a lot of ground, based around the Safe Systems approach.
“We have extended the offer of more assistance to the delegation and look forward to further strengthening the links between our respective organisations.”
This is the second time Road Safety GB has contributed to road safety discussions with South Korean officials.
In September 2015, Alan Kennedy travelled to Seoul to present at an international conference on the subject of pedestrian safety in the UK. The conference was organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Safety and Security, in a bid to find solutions to enhance road safety in South Korea.
In another international collaboration, Honor Byford, the then chair of Road Safety GB, delivered a series of presentations at an international road safety congress in St Petersburg, which took place during October 2016.
Their embassy is round the corner to Westminster City Hall. I met a delegation 5 years ago to talk about primary school road safety lessons and then again 3 years later when I met a group of teachers to discuss putting road safety education across curriculum subjects. We exchanged gifts and I have a lovely display of miniature death masks! They were keen to use simple resources rather than high tech stuff then but recently, as we keep in touch, they commented on the West Midlands fire service VR material.
Peter Wilson Westminster
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Bob – I believe it was primarily a fact-finding meeting for the Korean delegation.
Nick Rawlings, editor, Road Safety News
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Was this a two way interaction and if so did those in attendance learn anything of value from the Koreans?
Bob Craven Lancs
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