UBC hosts road safety symposium featuring international experts

With the number of car crashes resulting in injury or death increasing every year, the need to make our roads safer has never been more urgent. But as traffic worsens, potentially attention-diverting technologies proliferate and substance abuse remains rampant, how can this be accomplished? 

It is a question that will be tackled by local and international transportation experts at the 2019 International Road Safety Symposium, which is taking place in Vancouver today and tomorrow. Hosted by UBC’s Bureau of Integrated Transportation Safety and Advanced Mobility (BITSAM) and the BC Centre for Disease Control, the event will include presentations and interactive panel discussions on topics such as the impact of big data and new modes of transport like e-scooters on road safety.

At UBC, road safety research is being led by BITSAM director Tarek Sayed, a civil engineering professor and the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Transportation Safety and Advanced Mobility. Sayed’s work to improve our methods of evaluating road safety and design, which has appeared in over 350 papers, has influenced transportation and infrastructure authorities around the world.

Among the other road safety luminaries in attendance at the symposium will be Ben Beck, Deputy Head of Prehospital, Emergency and Trauma Research at Monash University, and Fred Wegman, Emeritus Professor of Traffic Safety at the Delft University of Technology and a founder of the Safe System approach to road safety.

Bowinn Ma, MLA for North Vancouver-Lonsdale and Parliamentary Secretary for TransLink — as well as a graduate of UBC Engineering — will deliver the keynote address.