Objectives

The aim of the IMPACT project is to overcome the gap of missing direct intercontinental relations in the field of road safety, which is leaving the potential benefits of exchange of experience and joint efforts deeply underexplored, by providing a platform for long-term targeted interaction of players in the road safety and accident prevention field from the covered regions of Europe, Asia and Latin America. The project will focus especially on developing experience in preventing accidents with the most disadvantaged participants in road traffic, namely the vulnerable road users, i.e. pedestrians, bicyclists and powered two-wheeler drivers, which are to a great extent young people. Thus we will help the participating countries reach their targets of reducing road fatalities in relation to the European Road Safety Policy Orientations 2011-2020 and the UN "Decade of Action on Road Safety (2011- 2020)".

The objectives are:

• Exchange of existing knowledge; the project partners' experience will be used to:
  1. Choose and share good practices in road safety, involving modern technologies (driving simulators) for attracting the young people's attention and focusing on volunteer activities with large social impact; i.e. each project partner will implement a high quality local road safety campaign;
  2. Train 18 youth workers (3 people per partner country) and 30 volunteer youth leaders (1 team of 5 people per partner country) to successfully plan and implement youth-led awareness-raising campaigns, targeting vulnerable road users. Those people will receive valuable professional skills which will help their personal and/or professional interests evolve on the basis of the newly acquired experience, improving their chances for better future carrier and/or education. Their learning outcomes will be recognized, using available European transparency and validation tools.
  3. Involve directly 1800 citizens (300 per partner country, 50% with less opportunities) in the six local field campaigns, organized by the volunteer youth leaders and to reach at least 12 000 more through the paper materials distributed during them, 50 000 people through the partners' websites and 50 000 reached through media.
• Knowledge generation: During the first phase of the project, the partners will share their good practices. Then the effort of the partnership will be directed towards cross-fertilization of the EU, Asian and Latin American experience. Each partner will select one of its best road safety practices and will choose a new element to add to it.
• New knowledge exchange and dissemination: During the project partner meetings will reach out to stakeholders through an open public workshop to be organized in China and a conference to be organized in Argentina with the participation of representatives from the partner organizations (project coordinators and volunteers). There they will present their experience with the project and the received feedback during the implemented campaigns. Based on the findings the independent project evaluator will develop and disseminate a report, which can serve as a guideline for initiating future joint activities between representatives from the three regions.