Workshop on Improving Road Safety in CAREC

The CAREC Institute has conducted an online road safety workshop, in collaboration with the CAREC Program and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), targeting government officials and road safety experts from Mongolia. The virtual workshop was organized around six sessions over the period of three weeks and the first session was held on 12 May 2020.

The CAREC Institute Director Syed Shakeel Shah opened the event and greeted Mr. Batbold Sandagdorj, State Secretary of Ministry of Road and Transport Development of the Government of Mongolia, among other participants. Mr. Shah referred to the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety and SDG goals to half the number of global deaths and injuries from road crashes by 2020. He further mentioned that given the context of the six corridors of CAREC Program and numerous economic and trade corridors of the PRC’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative, land connectivity is transforming the paradigms of industrial development and growth within regions and beyond. The CAREC Program alone has mobilized $37 billion investment in the region thus far, 78% of which went in overland systems of the transport sector. The CAREC road corridor network is set to expand for better connectivity, thus road safety plays a major role in operating the corridors at their optimal capacity.

The CAREC countries made the road safety a collective regional priority at the 15th CAREC Ministerial Conference in October 2016 when they adopted the regional road safety strategy 2017–2030. The strategy aims to reduce fatalities on CAREC roads by 50% by 2030, as compared with 2010. The CAREC Institute has shifted to online training delivery to remain relevant in the time of pandemic and assist the member countries to achieve the CAREC road safety strategy objectives.

This event continued the series of road safety workshops that started in Dushanbe in 2017, followed by manuals in 2018 on road safety audit, safer road works, roadside hazard management, and workshops in Bishkek in March 2019, in Tbilisi in April 2019, in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in September 2019, and in Tbilisi (for Afghanistan participants) in November 2019.

The workshop aimed at sharing the best practices in road safety engineering, including treating hazardous road locations (black spots), road safety audits, roadside hazard management, and safety at road work sites. It equipped participants with necessary resources to advocate for changes in policies and practices that may be required at the national level.