Virtual workshop on Improving Road Safety Engineering in CAREC (Kazakhstan)

The CAREC Institute has conducted a country-specific online road safety workshop targeting government officials and road safety experts from Kazakhstan. The virtual workshop was organized around several sessions over three weeks and the first session was held on 12 October 2021.

The CAREC Institute Director Syed Shakeel Shah opened the event and referred to the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety and SDG goals. He further mentioned that given the context of the six corridors of the 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 the region 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.

This country-specific 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.

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, pedestrian safety, and workshops in Bishkek in March 2019, in Tbilisi in April 2019, in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia autonomous region of the PRC in September 2019, in Tbilisi (for Afghanistan participants) in November 2019, and an online workshop for Mongolian participation in May 2020. Additionally, in March 2021, the CAREC Institute produced four Digital Learning Modules (DLMs) reflective of the four road safety manuals. All DLMs are available and accessible on the CAREC Institute e-learning platform.