Bus and Coach Industry Tackles Road Safety in Latin America

6 April 2011

Joint IRU - FADEEAC Conference on Road Safety & Professional Training held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as a concrete contribution to the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety, concludes that focusing on the human element through professional training is the key to effectively improving road safety in Latin America.

Buenos Aires – Committed to contribute to the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety, the International Road Transport Union (IRU) and its Argentinean Member Association the Federación Argentina de Entidades Empresarias de Autotransportes de Cargas (FADEEAC) today held an international conference on “Road Safety and Road Transport Professional Training”, attended by some 800 representatives of the public authorities, road transport and training industries from Latin America.

Delegates, who included the Under Secretary of Road Transport, Ministry of Federal Planning, Jorge González, the Executive Director of the National Road Safety Agency, Lic. Felipe Rodríguez Laguens, as well as road safety research experts, reviewed road safety in Argentina, Ibero-America and Mercosur and explored ways of concretely improving road safety in Latin America, notably through understanding and addressing the main causes of accidents involving heavy commercial vehicles, as well as technology applied to road transport vehicles and control authorities.

IRU Secretary General, Martin Marmy, stressed, “For true road transport professionals, every road accident is one too many and the road transport industry supports every measure that effectively improves road safety by targeting the main cause of an accident involving commercial vehicles.”

FADEEAC President, Luis A. Morales, continued, “The objective of this international conference was to put the industry’s focus on road safety challenges specific to Latin America. Indeed, FADEEAC has been actively implementing various road safety tools and training programmes in Argentina, as our objective is to continuously enhance road safety by furthering professionalism within the road transport sector.”

Conference delegates noted that the involvement of commercial vehicles in accidents does not automatically mean that they are the cause of such accidents, as demonstrated by scientific investigations, such as the European Truck Accident Causation (ETAC) study, where data have shown that out of 85.2% of all accidents caused by human error, 75% were caused by other road users against 25% by the truck driver. Experts thus recommended focusing on the human element, notably by promoting effective and harmonised standards for vocational training of road transport professionals, such as those developed by the IRU Academy.

Head of IRU Academy, Patrick Philipp, explained, “the IRU Academy offers a vast array of road transport training modules whose internationally recognised standards ensure that commercial drivers and managers are professionally trained and thus safer! However, other road users share the infrastructure with commercial vehicles and it is the task of public authorities to ensure that they are equally trained accordingly.”

Conference delegates declared that on the basis of road safety research conclusions, a three-step approach is necessary to effectively improve road safety:

analysing the main causes of accidents involving heavy commercial vehicles to make informed policy and business decisions;
focusing on the human element by supporting and promoting the training of professional drivers as provided by the IRU Academy and training other road users; and
cooperating with the business community to achieve tangible results.

See the Conference highlights

See the photo gallery