PTV Group drives road safety forward

Karlsruhe, 16 May 2018. From 23 to 25 May, transport ministers from approximately 60 countries will come together for the International Transport Forum (ITF) in Leipzig. With the motto “Transport Safety & Security”, this year’s focus is on road safety. The software provider PTV Group will show how new mobility concepts can help improve safety on the roads.

Right of way for Vision Zero: Zero road fatalities is the premise here. In order to achieve this, intelligent software solutions help integrate aspects of road safety into strategic decisions for transport planning. This also applies for future mobility scenarios. Using models and simulation, for example, it is possible for the PTV Group to examine more precisely and understand the effects of individual measures. PTV Group will present the PTV Vistad software solution for the first time at the ITF; it can be used to record, validate and evaluate road accident data. This application is already standard equipment at eleven of 16 police agencies in the German federal states. It helps accident commissions formulate effective safety measures and it advances accident research.

The importance of road safety is underscored by the newly-created position of Solution Director Traffic Safety, which Sofia Salek de Braun took over at PTV in September 2017. This native Bolivian has been committed to the topic of traffic safety at the company for many years already, and she regards a large part of her job as sensitizing the public to traffic safety issues. At the press conference on 23 May from 4:00 to 4:30 pm at the PTV stand, this road safety ambassador will report how she works on concrete actions and initiatives relating to Vision Zero with international partners including the World Bank. “I am convinced that change is only possible if all actors in a transport system – from the authorities to automobile manufacturers to each individual driver – take responsibility and work together”, says Sofia Salek de Braun.

She will present a vision of what such cooperation might look like on 25 May at 10:30 am in the ITF Open Stage Café in her talk “Mobilizing Multi-Stakeholder Actions for Road Safety – a case example from Bolivia” based on a practical example from her homeland of Bolivia. The PTV expert has been working for greater safety on the roads there since 2016, and she has worked with various actors to formulate a transport safety chart. “For the first time in Bolivia, members of national, regional and local governments sat down at the table with representatives from the police, universities, industry, media and voluntary organizations. Only this way could we change so much there”, she explains.

Sofia Salek de Braun will also be speaking the day before the ITF at the conference “Women mobilize Women” with a keynote speech on the topic “Why safe roads and transport matter to all of us” (22 May, 4:15 pm, Kongresshalle Zoo, Leipzig).