The annual death toll from road traffic accidents stands at over one million worldwide. The United Nations is aiming to reduce this number considerably and has declared the period from 2011 to 2020 the Decade of Action for Road Safety. The European Road Safety Charter is pursuing the same aim and has to date enlisted more than 2,300 public and private organisations, including the PTV Group.

"With the support of the Global Road Safety Commitment, we are one step closer to making roads safer all over the world", says CEO Vincent Kobesen, who has now signed the agreement on behalf of the PTV Group. Road safety was also one of the main focuses at the International Transport Forum (ITF) in Leipzig and the international industry event Shaping Transportation in Berlin, where decision-makers and practitioners from the fields of transportation planning and traffic engineering were represented.

The internationally operating PTV Group has long been committed to improving road safety, for example with the electronic road accident analysis tool EUSka, which is used by police forces in 11 federal states, or with PTV Visum Safety, which helps users to factor in road safety when planning infrastructure measures using concrete accident data. Other PTV Group measures include pedestrian simulations for major events, evacuation scenarios, analysis of weak points, safe and secure navigation solutions for commercial traffic, an app for safe HGV parking, signal control optimisation and real-time solutions for traffic management to reduce traffic jams and traffic jam-related accidents.

For Kobesen, real-time information is particularly useful for traffic management and risk reduction. At the International Transport Forum (ITF) on 23 May, he therefore called on politicians to create the necessary regulations for the open, standardised and safe exchange of information so that industry partners can put new applications on the market which will allow traffic issues to be resolved even more efficiently in future.