UBC Road Safety Campaign

As a signatory of the European Road Safety, the UBC decided to launch a Road Safety Campaign aimed at raising awareness of all traffic participants: pedestrians, cyclists and drivers in the UBC member cities. The campaign was conducted by the UBC Commission on Transportation. Within the campaign several actions have been undertaken.

The Commission published the brochure on road safety in three languages: English - "Safe on the road", Polish - "Bezpiecznie na drodze" and Russian -"Be3onacHocmb Ha dopoze". Total circulation of the brochure amounts to 1500 copies.

In May 2010 a Road Safety Course for Children-Auto-chodzik was organised. It is one of the largest Polish educational programmes focused on traffic education addressed to pre-school and school children. Following the specially designed route, kids learned traffic safety rules, road signs and had the possibility to obtain their first "driving licence". The event aimed at introducing new pleasant and enjoyable ways of teaching children how to behave safely in the traffic area.

Another initiative in the Campaign was the Road Safety Competition 2010. The Commission intended to award the best project which introduced measures aimed at increasing safety of inexperienced young drivers, and consequently making them more aware of the dangers of alcohol and drugs offering information that raise awareness of young people as regards the rules of safe driving.

The UBC Road Safety Campaign was concluded by an international road safety seminar: "What can we do to increase the road safety among children and young people?" organised in Gdynia (Poland) on 21-22 October 2010. The seminar was aimed at showing what measures can be taken to increase the road safety of children and the youth, what has already been done and what more could be undertaken to increase the general level of road safety. It was addressed to teachers, local government, non-governmental organisations, police, as well as institutions dealing with road safety issues. Both national and foreign speakers had been invited to the seminar, among them Ms Isabelle Kardacz, Head of the Road Safety Unit in the European Commission who presented the European Road Safety Policy Orientations in the years 2011-2020. The participants learned the assumptions of the Swedish Vision Zero Initiative described by a representative of the Swedish Embassy in Poland. The basic rule of this Swedish approach to road safety is a conviction that no loss of life is acceptable. The Vision Zero approach has proven highly successful-Sweden has one of the world's lowest traffic-related fatality rates. The representative of the Gdańsk University of Technology presented the Polish Vision Zero - GAMBIT 2005 - 2013.