CARSP President’s Year End Message
Hello CARSP friends,
Another year has gone by as quickly as the last, and your Board and Executive Director have been very busy helping to keep CARSP vibrant and valuable to a growing road safety community. Thank you to our Board members and our Executive Director, Brenda Suggett, for all their energy, commitment and contributions to CARSP’s success this past year. With your support, we are looking forward to continuing our growth in partnerships, events and knowledge sharing, through 2018!
Our 2017 annual conference in Toronto, June 18-21, was successful beyond our expectations. We had 260 delegates from around the world. We are aiming to continue that momentum with Victoria where our conference theme for 2018 is Next-generation Transportation – the Future of Road Safety. Registration will open in late January and I invite you to explore the conference webpages for more information: https://carsp.ca/carsp-conference/carsp-conference-2018.
CARSP continues to co-chair the Canadian Global Road Safety Committee (CGRSC) along with Parachute. This committee holds monthly teleconferences amongst agencies from a broad range of road safety experience. Committee members share what they are doing and look for opportunities to coordinate and collaborate. The CGRSC also provides advice and support related to events such as the National Day of Remembrance for Road Crash Victims.
We also continue to be part of the ongoing development of a North American Road Safety Professional (RSP) certification program. The steering committee has been meeting monthly and is currently aiming to make the Level I certification available later in 2018. Subject matter experts will take the opportunity to meet at the Transportation Research Board’s annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
We have also been busy developing our partnerships, and supporting events and organizations that focus on road safety. Board members and our Executive Director participated in the Parachute’s “2nd Vision Zero Summit” and the Ontario Ministry of Transportation’s Vulnerable Road User Symposium. We were also represented at the ”arrive alive DRIVE SOBER/Not by Accident Joint Conference”, The “Huron County Road Safety Forum”, the “Ontario Injury Prevention Forum” and the “2nd Ontario Road Safety Forum”.
As part of our educational stream of services, we hope you have continued to enjoy the quarterly Safety Network Newsletter – a big thank you to our dedicated Editorial Committee. I especially want to thank Rebecca Peterniak for her years of service as the Editor/Chair of the newsletter, since she handed over the reigns to Pamela Fuselli, of Parachute, in November of this year. Thank-you to Pamela for taking on this important role. Rebecca will continue to remain a member of that committee. I would also like to thank Brenda Suggett, our Executive Director, for compiling our Canadian Road Safety News Digest; providing members with the latest news articles on road safety from across the country. This year we launched webinars under the lead of our Membership and Marketing committee, and the expertise of Liz Owens and Tony Churchill. We also hosted a workshop on “Program Evaluation of Road Safety Initiatives”, which took place just prior to the 2017 CARSP Conference. We continue to explore new ways of knowledge sharing and building partnerships to expand our knowledge-sharing reach and impact.
On behalf of the CARSP Board of Directors, I would like to wish you all a safe and merry Christmas and best wishes for a successful and generous 2018.
Jennifer Kroeker-Hall
President, CARSP