Dave Conway - Dreaming of Safer Roads
Author: Dave Conway
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There is no rest when it comes to road safety and reducing the devastating toll of lives lost or ruined as a result of road crashes.
I may have been quiet for a few months, but I promise you that I’ve been as busy as ever in my pursuit of improving road safety worldwide.
There have been a couple of very significant events recently.
In February, leaders from around 50 countries made new national commitments to advance road safety at the Fourth Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, hosted by the Kingdom of Morocco and the World Health Organization (WHO) in Marrakech.
It seems strange reporting on this event, which is held every five years, as, for the first time, I was a member of the group actually responsible for organising the event, the UNRSC.
Sadly, I was unable to attend. Nonetheless, the event was a tremendous success, with reportedly 5,000 attendees, 200 speakers, and government representatives from more than 110 countries in attendance. The conference featured dozens of workshops and breakout meetings in addition to the main plenary events. I was very proud to see so many of my friends and colleagues from the international road safety community participating as speakers and hosts at the event.
Ultimately, the outcome of the event was the Marrakech Declaration 2025, agreed to by participating countries. It urges Member States and relevant actors to accelerate and scale up efforts to implement the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021–2030. The declaration calls for road safety to be made a political priority and recognised as a key enabler of the broader sustainable development agenda, noting the opportunities and challenges presented by the current geopolitical context.
Additionally, the government representatives from each participating country made unique pledges to contribute to reducing deaths and serious injuries on their roads.
For the UK, I was delighted that the government representative, Lilian Greenwood, the Minister for the Future of Roads, endorsed the Declaration and, perhaps more importantly, pledged that the UK will produce its first national road safety strategy in over a decade.
For as long as I have been engaged with this work, we have sought to have a government road safety strategy. I just hope they can fulfil this promise.
Earlier this month, I attended a virtual plenary committee meeting of the ISO Technical Committee, TC241, responsible for the 39000 group of road safety standards.
This was the first meeting since the secretariat of the committee passed from Sweden to South Korea. This meant that the online meeting took place on Korean time zones which, for me, meant starting at 01:00am and finishing at 09:00am each day, for three days straight.
I’m proud to say that I managed to attend and contribute to every meeting. From Thursday to Friday, I went 44-and-a-half hours without proper sleep, with just brief naps in the “lunch breaks” — even though I’m no longer the chair of the committee.
There were some great outputs though, and I am delighted that the two new start-up guides for ISO 39001 and 39002, of which I was the lead author, have now been published on the ISO website. I am particularly proud that the FM Conway methodology is heavily featured in the guides, affirming the business’ position as a world leader in road safety.
Work on the revision of ISO 39001 is scheduled to be started at the November plenary meeting, pencilled in for South Korea, which I hope to attend this time so I can sleep at night!
I was also very proud to see a resolution thanking me for my efforts and contributions as Deputy Chair of the committee. It’s always nice to receive a little recognition!
All in all, I’m pretty satisfied with what I continue to contribute to this work, and I look forward to bringing you my next update.
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