On September 23, 2021, the Risk Assessment on Danube Area Roads (RADAR) project consortium implemented the Final Conference that aimed at ‘Striving for Safer Infrastructure for All Road Users in Danube Area’. The conference was a hybrid event, where an in-person version of the conference took place in Bled, Slovenia.

More than 160 road safety experts and representatives of road infrastructure safety sector from Danube area and transport stakeholders from all over world registered to the RADAR project’s final conference organised under the aegis of the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the EU and in cooperation with the European Union Strategy for Danube Region (EUSDR) – PA1b: To improve mobility and multimodality – Road, Rail, and Air Links.

The conference was an opportunity for road safety organisations and experts to discuss and chart the future strategic directions focusing on the improvement of the road infrastructure safety in the Danube area for all road users.

Large parts of the Danube road network rate poorly for safety and death rates in many countries are higher than the EU average. Many countries lack professional capacity and approaches to the problem vary. Franc Zepic, coordinator at European Union Strategy for Danube Region emphasised that “in Danube area there a number of challenges – from different driving culture, quality of roads infrastructure to vehicle safety. And we need to address that to narrow the road safety gap. We need to cooperate, coordinate, promote successful activities, exchange best practices and join efforts to receive additional financing.”

“Improving road infrastructure is the cornerstone of road safety”

The conference brought together 20 global road safety stakeholders to highlight RADAR project’s results and demonstrate the benefits of systematic approach to safer road infrastructure. It has contributed to the debate of prioritisation of road safety investments and network wide road safety assessments under revised RISM directive and broader. In addition, the conference underlined the need to work towards the implementation of both the United Nations and European Commission goals on road safety.

“Improving road infrastructure is the cornerstone of road safety and it will be critical to achieve the new goals of the Second decade of Action for Road Safety (2021-2030) proclaimed by United Nations General Assembly in September 2020,” underlined Liljana Cela from Transport Community Secretariat. Malaya Zumel from European Investment Bank agreed and continued that the road ahead will focus on contributing to the New Decade of Action: “Now I guess it is up to us all, notably the project owners, to ensure the findings are used to make positive changes on the ground. If we miss the chance to get our projects done right, now, unsafe roads will be out there for the next 20+ years.”

Read the full press release of the RADAR project's final conference HERE. 

• Click HERE to access the full recording of the conference.
• Click HERE to listen to the video message of the Minister of Infrastructure in Slovenia. 
• Click HERE to view the final agenda and more about the project. 
• Click HERE to download the PowerPoint presentations from the conference.