The Ministry of Transport of the Royal Thai Government and the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) together co-host “The 14th International Conference of Road Safety on Four Continents” from 14 to 16 November 2007 at Nai Lert Park Bangkok Hotel.
H.E. Mr. Lennart Linnér, Ambassador of Sweden to Thailand was the guest of honor at the opening ceremony. He addressed the important of cooperation between countries in order to combat this problem.
“This is clearly not a one man job, there’s a very few things we can do alone nowadays and we need all your help from all nations. Road accidents in Thailand is currently a huge issue causing a high fatality rate, higher than many countries in this continent,” says Mr. Linnér.
“It requires many aspects of effort in the society to really have an impact on the road safety, we need more education, more awareness and international brainstorming. For instances the infrastructure, building safe roads in the appropriate way and also to conduct the research of how this is done. This conference is a great opportunity that we can share our knowledge and learn from each other.”
He also pointed out how Thailand could take example from Sweden as a country whose road accident rate is very low.
“In Sweden we produce cars like Volvo or Scania, these cars are sold all around the world. It is very important to make sure that our vehicles are safe on the road. And we also have something called Vision Zero, the basic idea behind this is that serious injuries and deaths on the road should not be tolerated. After ten years after this policy was introduced, Sweden significantly reduce the number of fatalities on its road. This vision is something I would like to share with Thailand ” he continues.
Vision Zero accepts that accidents will happen, so the best course of action is to try to minimize the effects: traffic is slowed, intersections are redesigned, guard rails put up, and rigid roadside objects like trees and rocks are removed.
Kent Gustafson, Chairman of the organizing committee of VTI also addressed a welcome speech at the ceremony, explaining more about the conference itself. This multi-continental conference is held for the first time in Asia and will be a global stage to address common challenging issues of road safety similarly experienced by countries across the world.
For more information on this conference please visit www.vti.se/RS4C
