Romania

Country Summary

Like many countries around the world, winters in Romania are dark and cold. Yet with the support of the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) in Romania and partners such as Mercedes-Benz and the Romania Red Cross, people may be safer on the roads during the winter months when driving conditions are particularly hazardous.

Shedding light on safety

With cooperation from GRSP, Mercedes-Benz helped increase the visibility of vehicles on the roads by offering free testing of exterior lights to all Mercedes-Benz passenger cars, commercial vehicles and trucks. The service was promoted for three months from November 2010 through a nation-wide campaign, which emphasized the importance of good visibility, and aimed to decrease the number of accidents caused by low visibility.

Partnership for First Aid

The Romania Red Cross, another partner of the GRSP, is also working to make roads safer for their communities. Together they have created a work plan that will offer First Aid training to local communities. The goal is to compliment the efforts of the paramedics and other local organisations that offer support after an accident. They also plan to organize blood donations. If successfully carried out in 2011, the trainings are expected to expand among traffic police and driving schools throughout the country.

Europe’s Young ‘Stars’

The GRSP in Romania also participated in the European Union project that encourages young people to design and develop programs to reduce speeding. The STARS project, as it's called, encourages students around Europe to take action in order to reduce speeding through infrastructure or communication projects (awareness campaigns, etc.). STARS is developed by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) and is being implemented in Romania, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece and Spain. Four students (two male-female teams) from Romania have been selected to be among the 22 students who attended speed-management camp in September 2010.

Speed Management

The STARS project compliments work that began in 2009, when GRSP began focusing on speed management. A leading factor in road-traffic crashes in Romania, speed is a challenging risk factor to manage. After translating the United Nations Good Practice Manual on Speed Management into Romanian, the GRSP began a series of capacity building workshops with police officials who then implemented a variety of follow up training sessions and speed management interventions.

We want to cover the period before the paramedics arrive, and teach people the basics, so their situation in a road collision does not get worse.

– Mircea Iosif, GRSP Manager