Agilysis team at 7th IRTAD conference, Lyon
The Agilysis team were proud to be on of the UK representatives at the 7th International Road Traffic Accident Database (IRTAD) conference in Lyon, France last week. This is the second time we have been to the event, having also attended the Marrakech 2019 conference, and it’s great to be part of an international community of professionals who are working with road safety data.
The conference themes included; data driven road safety strategies, assessment of road safety measures, management of road safety data, crash causation and risk factors, local and regional road safety observatories, and new sources of road safety data. Presenters from five continents took part from dozens of organisations including, NGOs, governments, research agencies, and consultancies.
Four of the Agilysis team were selected by the scientific committee to present their abstracts:
- Creating a cultural maturity model to assess Safe System readiness within road safety organisations. Tanya Fosdick
- GB road safety performance index. Richard Owen
- Identifying roads with 75% of travel in LMICs. Craig Smith
- Identifying high risk routes for coach travel using collision records, telematics devices, and vehicle sensors. Lyndsey Owen
Other UK representatives providing presentations included the Department for Transport and TRL.
Although the conference took place over only two days there were nearly 50 presentations all of which were high-quality and provided inspiration for those working in the UK. Highlights for the team included a review of speed cameras in Sweden, the impact of introducing car licenses for 17 year olds in Norway, the creation of a global road safety database, accident profiles for e-scooter use in three cities, developing the Asian Road Safety Observatory, and detecting helmet-wearing rates for motorcyclists. Although it’s not the same as being there, presentation slides are available on the OECD/ITF website.
Learning from other countries is a fantastic way of provoking debate in the UK and gives inspiration for topics and speakers at the Joining the Dots conference each year. In the past we have featured international speakers at the event picked from IRTAD member organisations who are pioneering in the field of road safety data and analysis. There are so many fascinating presentations that are directly applicable to the UK which means that if we are struggling to answer a problem at home, it’s likely that someone, somewhere else has already had success.
We very much enjoyed meeting old friends and making new ones, and we are bursting with ideas to develop and improve our own data source, applications, and research projects.
"At the end of the conference IRTAD members agreed a joint declaration on the theme of 'Better Road Safety Data, Better Outcomes'. The declaration urged countries to monitor road safety progress towards the goals of the Second Decade of Action for Road Safety including using interim targets and Safety Performance Indicators (SPI). We were pleased to see strong links with road safety strategies and the safe system, as well as an interest in vulnerable road user data. The declaration was also inspired our recent work with novel data sources in the UK and overseas, recognising this as low-cost ways of expanding access to information about road networks. You can read the full declaration here:
"As a new member to the Agilysis family I was excited for my first experience of an international conference and the IRTAD Conference didn't disappoint."
"The key take away for me was learning of the international road safety community, a community I had no previous awareness of."
"It was interesting to hear of the challenges that we all face, many the same no matter the country of origin, and the different ways in which we are trying to use data to achieve better safety outcomes. Attending the conference also helped put into context, for me, some of the international projects we work on, the role of those clients and how our work helps improve road safety at the global scale."
