At the end of day 2 at the 4th European Youth Forum for Road Safety delegates from around Europe will depart with new knowledge, information and tools to implement road safety in their nations. Yesterday, we saw the adoption of the European Youth Declaration for Road Safety and delegates returned to the forum in high spirits to persevere with the road safety agenda of the final day of the forum.
The second day of the 4th European Youth Forum for Road Safety held at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium comes to an end which also marks the end of the Forum for 2011. This day was significantly orientated around evaluation, education and on putting the priority on ‘life long education’ for young people to change mentalities with regards to their attitude and therefore behaviour for road safety.
The first speaker Mr Cecile Beguile from the European Commission gave commendations on the adoption of the European Youth Declaration for Road Safety which held a strong focus on education. Continuing on the theme of education and training, Mr Wale Yusuff, Director of the S.A.M.E Academy in the United Kingdom offered delegates a dynamic and well thought-out presentation about his work to train young people on the principles of Safety, Awareness, Mentoring and Education. The program offers young people a range of skills to be conscious and responsible road users from an early age before their licensing stages.
Dr Julie Gandolfi from the Driver Research Ltd explained to the delegates the most important element of reviewing effective road safety projects; evaluation. Her presentation offered delegates the chance to appreciate the key elements for successful young driver initiatives to which evaluation should be a key monitoring tool for effectives.
Under the continuing theme of education and training, HERMES a European Project captures in a DVD video gave top tips for learner driver coaching. The key message was that ‘the coach supports the learner by getting information from them as opposed to putting the information into them’, coaching instead of instructing.
After lunch, students from Tallin University explained the innovative educational journey of undertaking a road safety course as a bachelors degree in Estonia. The presentation evoked interest from the delegates who found the concept of a degree in road safety a fascinating idea with a view for further exploration.
With the attendance of our founding partner Michelin, information about the ROSYPE project as well as Michelin’s CSR work in global road safety was presented with gusto and energy while delegates can apply for the project to run ROSYPE in one European country at the forum.
Keeping true to the youthful approach to the forum, delegates broke up into two groups and discussed two topics, ‘Safety on Two Wheels’ and ‘Eco Driving’ and had a dynamic debate about these areas with regards to bringing more attention to the topics in Europe.
After this, Communications Officer at YOURS, Manpreet Darroch presented about the importance of online media and the advantages and disadvantages of reliance on the internet. His presentation can be found in the attachment. Both Floor´s and Manpreet’s presentation will be available to be viewed as a video online shortly as they were last year.
Very exciting news was shared by the European Commission in which the launch of the new ‘Going Abroad App’ for road safety rules on Europe’s roads was shared with the delegates. As well as this, the European Commission revealed that they will be running a youth and road safety Facebook campaign towards the end of the year. More details will be shared in due course.
The final presentations were well received by the delegates of the forum. An official report on the two days, including the future of the forum will be online as soon as it has been made available. In total there were 65 participants attending including 52 official young delegates from 27 EU member states.
The conference ends with the message, ‘Together we can make our European roads safe’. The final word went to Isabelle Kardacz Director of DG MOVE. She told delegates, ‘To work together, give the European Commission your valuable input and work hard to implement road safety in Europe’.