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CARSP President’s Year End Message

Hello CARSP friends,
2018 is coming to an end and many interesting things happened at CARSP again this year. First, your Board welcomed several new members and appointments, including myself, as your new President and my colleague Alex Nolet, as Vice-President. We are very grateful for these new roles and are committed to continue the great work done by our predecessors and our Executive Director, Brenda Suggett. CARSP has never been so dynamic and we have great ideas to keep road safety on everyone’s agenda!

Our 2018 annual conference in Victoria, June 10-13, was, once again, successful beyond our expectations. We had 271 delegates from around the world, one of the highest attendances ever! For me, it was the end of a fulfilling sabbatical year in British Columbia, learning and working with our road safety colleagues there. We anticipate another strong attendance as we partner with the City of Calgary to bring you the 2019 CARSP Conference. The trend of Canadian provinces and municipalities adopting Vision Zero as their road safety or transportation strategy, and the corresponding need this has created for clarification, sharing and inspiring change is the driving force for our 2019 conference theme. Registration is open and the program will be available in early 2019. I invite you to explore the conference webpages for more information: https://carsp.ca/carsp-conference/carsp-conference-2019/. A one-day workshop following our conference, organized by CARSP and Parachute, will complement our great conference on this specific topic.

After a few years of ongoing development, the North American Road Safety Professional (RSP) Certification Program began in October of this year. The goals of the RSP certifications are to recognize road safety as a profession, to establish a recognized level of practice and knowledge, and to incentivize safety education. There are two levels. Level one certifies those individuals who have demonstrated a proficiency in the foundations of road safety principles. Level two is geared towards professionals whose primary job functions are directed at improving the safety performance of the surface transportation system. You can learn more and apply to the program here: http://www.tpcb.org/rsp/.

CARSP was also on the move to talk about road safety and represent our association in several events in Canada and around the world: Safety 2018 World Conference (Bangkok, Thailand), First African Road Safety Forum (Marrakech, Morocco), and here at home – arrive alive DRIVE SOBER (Mississauga, Ontario) and ATS Traffic’s Vision Zero Advocate Conference (Toronto, Ontario).

Throughout 2018 CARSP shared knowledge and news using the following media: the quarterly Safety Network Newsletter (thanks to our new Editor Pamela Fuselli and her committee), the Canadian Road Safety News Digest (thanks to Brenda for the continuous work on this!), and our very popular quarterly webinar series (lead by our Marketing and Membership committee). This year, the topics for our webinars were: Childhood Road Traffic Injuries in Canada (Dr. Liraz Fridman), the Safety Systems Approach (Ms. Mavis Johnson), the Community Road Safety Toolkit (Mr. Raheem Dilgir) and the Effects of Cycle Tracks Implementation on Cyclist-Motor Vehicle Collisions in Toronto (Ms. Rebecca Ling). Don’t’ forget you can watch the ones you missed in the Member Area of our website. If any of you would like to present your work to our membership in 2019, let us know!

On behalf of the CARSP Board of Directors, I would like to wish you all a safe and Happy Holidays and best wishes for a successful 2019.

Marie-Soleil Cloutier
President, CARSP