Road safety: bring a community together around a common goal
Context
“so that marrying doesn’t rhyme with mourning”
Road safety is a complicated subject in New Caledonia.
Commonplace dangerous behaviour on the roads, feelings of injustice and even impunity, “the problem is the others …”, every Road Safety plan has attempted to provide answers. However the overwhelming sentiment is that it is urgent to move on to another higher level.
Our understanding of the issue
Road safety began in 2000 in New Caledonia. When the Government called on STRATEGIC in 2019 to carry out the Road Safety Plan, two questions presented themselves:
• Shared results ?
• How do other comparable countries deal successfully with this problem ?
1st observation: the road safety community is divided
2nd observation: there are no shared results nor unified statistics
We have assembled previously scattered data (accidents, injuries, deaths). We then included in the graphs the different measures taken over the last 19 years.
3rd observation: accidents involving injuries to persons have dropped significantly over 19 years but the number of deaths has not changed.
Explanation of the process
STRATEGIC proposed to the New Caledonian Government a different method:
- A launch meeting with all the stakeholders (institutions, government departments, economic actors, the police force and civil society) to set out the method and assess the results.
The special “plus” of the approach:- The patronage of Jean TODT, President of the International Automobile Federation, and special “road safety” envoy of the Secretary General of the United Nations
- Along with the expertise of Eric Howard, international expert of a road safety task force of the United Nations, of Lisa Rossiter, Director of the New Zealand Transport Agency and Robert Trottein, President of the LASER Foundation.
- Decentralised meetings in each Province with local stakeholders to present the results, share the approach and collect all the propositions.
Conclusion:
While initially very divided, the road safety community came together and unanimously adopted a common aim, general principles and a coordination structure.
