Excellence in Road Safety Awards: European Commission rewards best road safety projects

The European Commission today announced the 2023 Excellence in Road Safety Awards. The awards recognise the best contributions by the European Road Safety Charter's community of organisations, authorities and companies towards safer roads across Europe.

Nearly 80 road safety initiatives were nominated for this recognition prize, with 15 projects from Belgium, Czechia, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Austria, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia being shortlisted within five award categories:

• best project dedicated to fitness to drive;
• best initiative to promote the road safety of persons with reduced mobility;
• best use of data for road safety;
• best project to support road safety in e-commerce;
• and a prize for best urban road safety.

The winning initiatives are examples of where organisations have delivered specific and measurable road safety actions to benefit their communities.

Introducing the 2023 winners: 

• Zavarovalnica Triglav and AMZS (Slovenia) – Refreshing rides for seniors with instructor  
• VZW Symfoon (Belgium) – for their obstacle-free pavements with Team Trottoir
• Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) (Austria) - for their Mobility Observation Box (MOB)
• An Post (Ireland) – for their Driving towards Zero campaign
• Municipality of Gdańsk (Poland) – for their traffic calming activities and campaigns

Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) (Austria) was chosen by the audience at the awards ceremony (Thursday 19 October 2023) to receive the Jacques Barrot Award. This special public choice prize has been awarded every year since 2016 to one of the winners and is dedicated to Jacques Barrot, a former European Commissioner for Transport.

Background

The European Road Safety Charter, initiated in 2004 by the European Commission, is the largest civil society platform on road safety. More than 4,000 public and private entities (companies of all types and sizes, automobile clubs, associations, schools, local authorities and others) have committed to the Charter. The Charter invites members to make a commitment to taking a specific measurable action within their area of responsibilities. Since 2006, the Excellence in Road Safety Awards have been presented to organisations that have carried out particularly interesting and effective road safety initiatives.

The European Commission is working to deliver its EU Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030, which involves halving the number of fatalities and serious injuries on European roads by 2030. This is a milestone on the way to ‘Vision Zero’ – zero fatalities and serious injuries by 2050.

For more information

Excellence in Road Safety Awards - Meet the winners 2023