Skip to main content

IBTTA Dublin: safety must be 'in our DNA'

Fatalities on Austria's motorway network have fallen but are still too many, says Asfinag
By Adam Hill October 26, 2022 Read time: 1 min
Road safety is 'not something one person or department can achieve', says Rene Moser

Asfinag, the authority responsible for Austria's highways, is putting safety at the heart of managing its operations.

Speaking at the IBTTA Global Tolling Summit in Dublin, Ireland, Rene Moser, senior EU and international affairs manager at Asfinag, insisted: "Road safety must become part of companies' DNA and must be an ongoing effort."

Deaths on Austria's motorway network have dropped from 77 in 2010 to 34 now, but Moser added: "That is still 34 fatalities too many."

Asfinag has aimed for a 'systems safety approach', he says: "Road safety starts in the planning department - but also its about the marketing, communications and innovation departments; it's not something one person or department can achieve. We also need the cooperation of external stakeholders."

These include emergency services, automobile clubs, broadcasters (for messaging), decision makers (on regulation), police (enforcement) - and education. 

"You go to driving school one time - but the world is changing," Moser points out.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • FOTsis targets ‘socially inclusive’ cooperative ITS
    December 5, 2013
    The FOTsis project addresses the imbalances between the vehicular and infrastructure sides of cooperative ITS infrastructures and looks to ensure road operators can help to enrich future technology applications. By Jason Barnes. Several developments have conspired to push the vehicular side of cooperative infrastructures/cooperative ITS to the fore in recent years. The automotive industry’s rather shorter product development and lifecycles combined with economic slowdown in many regions gave rise to the not
  • Last call for Canberra drivers
    November 23, 2022
    Australian capital aims to crack down on motorists using their phones at the wheel
  • America fires V2V starting gun
    April 7, 2014
    Leo McCloskey, ITS America’s senior vice president for Technical Programs, talks to Jason Barnes about what the recent NHTSA ruling on light vehicle connectivity means for cooperative infrastructures in North America. In early February the US Department of Transportation’s (USDOT’s) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced it had decided to start taking steps to enable Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication technology for light vehicles. In so doing, the many safety-related applicati
  • In-vehicle automation of safety compliance and other traffic violations
    January 24, 2012
    David Crawford explores new initiatives in enforcement. Achieving the EU’s new road safety target of reducing road traffic deaths by 50 per cent by 2020 depends on removing legal and institutional barriers to the deployment of new enforcement technologies, stresses Jan Malenstein. The senior ITS Adviser to Dutch National Police Agency the KLPD, and a European-level spokesperson on road and traffic safety, points to the importance of, among other requirements, an effective EUwide type approval process for fr