Event

How can active mobility increase traffic safety?

What happens if we look at road safety from a different perspective? If we see road safety as a necessity to achieve other sustainable development goals; for example more sustainable, active mobility and improved health? This approach was one of the recommendations at the UN conference on road safety in 2020; create momentum for traffic safety research by connecting to other actors and add new perspectives!

Welcome to this spring’s activity around modal shift – the transition to more sustainable and active travel! Our goal is to create traffic safety-enhancing research by connecting to health and active mobility. Given existing knowledge regarding health benefits associated with active travel, what can we do to unlock barriers to make this more accessible and what are the research needs regarding improved safety? There will be new opportunities for us; contributing to our common societal challenges, but also additional funding opportunities for our research, from sources other than those we primarily use for road safety research.

We start May 31 with an inspirational webinar and idea generation workshop.  We will listen to inspirational talks and directly after the seminar, it will be time for our first workshop! Everyone in the SAFER community is welcome to join our online idea generation workshop, where we jointly identify knowledge gaps, needs and potential research questions. If you do not have the possibility to participate, there will be opportunities for you to provide input in the digital tool anyway. Sign up using the registration form!

The third step will be our project creation workshops, the afternoon of June 13! Based on the exercise on May 31, we will pick out the top research topics and host physical workshops with the aim of initiating research collaborations and creating project proposals to suitable calls in the area of health/active mobility/sustainability.

A separate invitation will be sent out for the project creation workshops and you can sign up for the topic of your interest.


Event schedule for the Modal shift and safe active mobility workshop series – inspirational and project creation activities

May 31

09:00-10:30 Inspirational seminar and dialogue with Prof. Claes Tingvall, Prof. Marco te Brömmelstroet and Prof. Simone Pettigrew, hosted by our Research area directors Anna Sjörs Dahlman and Jolyon Carroll

10:30-10:45 Break

10:45-12:00 Online workshop to identify knowledge gaps, needs and potential research topics.

June 13, 13:00-16:00 Project creation workshops to develop more detailed project ideas for suitable calls (details to be set – save the date at this stage)


OUR SPEAKERS

Professor Claes Tingvall

Prof. Claes Tingvall is an adjunct professor at Chalmers University of Technology, and senior consultant at AFRY. He was retired as director of traffic safety from the Swedish Transport Administration in 2015. Since then he has among other duties been the chairperson of the Expert Academic Group for the preparation of the third Ministerial Conference on road safety, held Sweden February 2020.

Professor Simone Pettigrew

Professor Simone Pettigrew is the Director of Behaviour Change and Health Promotion at The George Institute for Global Health. She specialises in behavioural  psychology and its application to a wide range of health and social issues, including active and automated transport. Her research focus is in the area of health promotion and how to encourage individuals to make behavioural changes to improve their health. Much of Simone’s work focuses on vulnerable populations, especially, children, seniors, and low-income families. Specific health issues of interest include child obesity, alcohol consumption, mental health, and ageing. Read more about her research here.

Prof. Marco te Brömmelstroet
Marco te Brömmelstroet holds the position of Professor of Urban Mobility Futures at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on courses around land use and mobility in the Bachelor and Master program. Marco is the founding academic director of the Urban Cycling Institute that is a part of the Centre for Urban Studies. The Institute leads research into the reciprocal relations between cycling, society and cities and is also actively involved in international dissemination of Dutch cycling knowledge. Examples of latter are the Summer School on Planning the Cycling City, the MOOC Unraveling the Cycling City and the Why We Cycle documentary. Read more about his profile here.

 

MORE INFORMATION
You can read more about the recommendations from the UN conference here (see recommendation #3 and #4).

Note also the recent Resolution (document A/76/L.35) adopted by the UN General Assembly in March 2022, on the ‘integration of mainstream bicycling into public transportation systems for sustainable development’. It encourages Member States to improve road safety and integrate it into sustainable active mobility and transportation infrastructure planning and design; with a view to broader health outcomes, in particular the prevention of injuries and non-communicable diseases.