The 23rd FIM Europe Congress in Rome (Italy) hosted the 11th edition of Road Safety Conference, which traditionally deals with the most important and updated topics of the matter.
In the latest years, the Road Safety Conference dealt with road accidents, industry responses and initiatives, the systems to improve Road Safety, traumatic injuries and first aid, 2 wheeler behaviour and safety, roadside barriers and crash tests, and devices derived from track, such as airbag for motorcyclists. Last year, the Road Safety Conference dealt with themes related with the development of electronics and technology.
All these issues can be seen on FIM-Europe website: http://www.fim-europe.com/road-safety-conference/
The main focus at this year’s conference dealt with Sharing the road with Robots: When Motorcycle Meets Automation.
The theme of this year raised a lot of interest with the presentations of high level experts. The presence of European Parliament Member Mr Wim van de Camp has also been highly appreciated.
The conference was held under the auspices of Silvio Manicardi, FIM Europe second Deputy President, and of Jean-Pierre Moreau, Chairman of Public Affairs Commission, who opened the event with a welcome speech.
The agenda of the conference foresaw as first speech a brief presentation of a couple of issues that interest the motorcycle world and which under discussion in Brussels by John Chatterton-Ross, FIM and FIM Europe Director of Public Affairs. The first topic he dealt with is the Vnuk case: the case has nothing to do with motorcycle or motor sports. Mr Vnuk was injured in a fall from a ladder in a farmyard when the ladder was struck by a trailer pulled by a tractor – an industrial accident.
The European Court of Justice decided to award Mr Vnuk legal protection by extending the scope of the Motor Insurance Directive. There is no appeal because the ECJ is the highest court in the European Union.
In framing their judgment the Justices extended the scope to the point where many other activities (including motorcycle and motorsports) are now affected.
The second topic Mr Chatterton-Ross faced with is that of motorcycles clothing for everyday use: from 2018, in fact, there will be a new European law that will control the standard of protective clothes. Mr Chatterton-Ross ended his speech with a special thanks to a colleague from Norway, Mr Morten Hansen, who is retiring at the end of this year.
Above, the opening from Silvio Manicardi. All photos ©Buonanni&Grandi
The conference entered in its hot part with Frederic Soudain, Logos Public Affairs: “5GAA vehicles manufacturers and telecom industry Consortium”. In the future of autonomous mobility communication in between all users of the road will be a major task: 5G will be much more than mobile broadband connectivity, covering a variety of use-cases and industries. One of the most interesting 5G use-cases is V2X (vehicle to X), the framework that will allow vehicles to communicate with each other and beyond. The majority of communication and electronic industries are involved in this multimillion project.
Hennes Fischer, Senior Advisor, Yamaha, CMC Steering Committee Member talked about “Connected Motorcycling Consortium”: the motorcycle community is worried about the possible implementation of autonomous driving cars that cannot properly recognise motorcycles. Hennes Fischer was present, who is part of the consortium that takes care exactly about this aspect and he presented the actual situation that is less worrying than we could expect.
Antonio Erario, Head of International Regulatory Affairs, Italian Ministry of Infrastructures, talked about “The Italian position as biggest market of PTW in Europe”.
Mr. Erario explained the work of WP29 showing that the target to have full autonomous cars is the very near 2030. A lot of work is done to amend legislations starting from the Vienna Convention to adapt to the new traffic conditions which where not forecasted in the past.
The speech of Wim Van de Camp. In the end, Mr Wim Van de Camp, MEP European Parliament, talked about the “The European Parliament position”. Mr Van de Camp explained all aspects of the Parliament work that are of interest to motorcycling, including objective and orientation, challenges, sustainability, urban mobility, innovation, trade and road safety. In particular regarding this subject, the Valletta declaration is important, with its target to further reduce the deaths to 20.000 by 2020.
The full presentations of the Conference are published on FIM Europe website in “Beyond Sport”/Public Affairs section at the following link: http://www.fim-europe.com/road-safety-conference/
The video of the live streaming of the conference is available at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dDY8UzQ0t4&t=3037s
From the left, Manicardi, Soudain, Moreau and Van de Camp with FIM Europe President Dr Wolfgang Srb and Alessandro Sambuco, FIM Europe Secretary General – Photos ©Buonanni&Grandi
