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YouTubeChild road safety planned across 40% of Argentinian provinces, thanks to Child Health Initiative partner
Child safety mobility plans in Buenos Aries and across 23 Argentinian provinces have been put in place in the past year thanks to the work of the Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation (FGR) and the Argentinian National Road Safety Agency (ANSV), supported by the FIA Foundation.
At a special conference, ‘Children's Road Safety: a long-term commitment,’ FGR celebrated the significant successes in Argentina in the first year of its national office. During the event, FGR announced that 40% of provinces across Argentina are in some stage of developing of child road safety plan, thanks to collaboration between road safety stakeholders. This achievement represents a six-month training programme for 33 regional technical team experts to build their own child road safety strategy to address the unique road safety challenges of the area. FGR and ANSV are working to support the creation of child road safety plan in every province. To date, eight provinces have presented their strategic child road safety plans to the national government, despite the challenges posed by the COVI-19 pandemic and FGR plans to continue work into 2021.
GRF has been supporting road safety action in Argentina since 2012 with the FIA’s regional child restraint systems (CRS) programme and has been working with the Argentinian government, through the ANSV, on the National Road Safety Program since 2016 before opening a dedicated country office in 2019. Other successes since the opening of the Argentine office includes the improvement of 81 school environments - with the commitment of the authorities to reach 200 by the end of 2022 -, which involved the improvement of 740 pedestrian crossings, 1200 speed reducers in school areas and 195 signed or marked parking restriction zones.
Pablo C. La Spina, Manager for Road Education and Coexistence in the Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, said: "We formally thank [Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation] for the institutional and logistical support provided… for the development of Child Road Safety. The availability of human and material resources provided increased our knowledge on the subject, something that is extremely useful to promote safe child mobility in our city.”
With the support of the FIA Foundation, ‘Latin American Children Safe in Traffic’ is the flagship programme of the new country office, reducing risk factors associated with child road safety with a focus on school zones, continuing FGR’s in-country work. The programme is working across the five cities of Junín, Guaymallén, Neuquén, Jujuy, and Corrientes to build safe systems knowledge and widen regional networks through a combination of research, knowledge transfer and communications strategies.
FGR has also contributed to motorcycle safety improvements. A ‘training the trainers’ programme is enhancing the safety focus of motorcycle licence tests across the ten northern provinces with the highest motorcycle crash rates. The project aims to improve the existing theory courses addressing a range of issues, including: education and ethical citizenship; regulation; sanctions; signage; and efficient driving. More than 230 license centres from 16 provinces have been trained through the initiative so far.
Jorge 'Yuyo' Rubino, Motorcyclist Safety Department specialist at the ANSV, said: “The ‘Training the Trainers Course for Safe Motorcycling’ programme is a new and unprecedented programme in our country, with technical content, carried out by specialists and whose implementation is helping to professionalize the team of national instructors, providing knowledge and techniques to better train motorcyclists. From the National Road Safety Agency and in particular from the Motorcyclist Safety Department, we want to acknowledge the value of the project developed and implemented by FGR."
