On 4th February, Simon Fletcher, Coordinator Europe and Ilyas Daoud, Interfaces Coordinator in the UIC Brussels office met Ankatrien Boulanger and Werner De Dobbeleer from the Belgian Road Safety Institute both project managers for the CAST project dedicated to campaigns and awareness-raising strategies in traffic safety. CAST was a three year project co-financed by DG TREN of the European Commission following its wish to provide powerful and innovative guidelines to design, implement and evaluate traffic safety campaigns as well as improve future campaigns. The project was carried out by a consortium of 19 partners from 15 countries representing road safety institutes, transport research institutes, Ministries of transport and coordinated by the Belgian Road Safety Institute (IBSR-BIVV).
It has been agreed to circulate to all CAST partners from road administrations, EU officials, researchers and road safety associations, a copy of the campaign brief on the UIC-led project to raise the awareness at a European level of the issues that surround the road/rail interface at level crossings. A dedicated campaign (supported by the EC) is being developed that will culminate in a series of events at national level on 25th June.
Additionally, CAST will disseminate its results and recommendations to the organisations involved in the awareness day at level crossings during the next meeting of the task force coordinating this collective project, to be held in the UIC Brussels offices on 25th March. The Cast team is to outline the importance of assessing each national campaign and reporting to get more visibility on the effective outcomes of such campaigns, and have a clear picture with the view of improving future and more global actions at level crossings. Indeed, many UIC partners from USA, Canada and Australia have shown their interest in joining this action at a later stage.
This partnership with the CAST will provide them with a worked example of their project results involving something on a big scale and which will also add value to the road/rail awareness-raising project.
