Presenters:
- Cristina Catala (Project Manager at FESVIAL)
- Javier LLamazares (President of FESVIAL)
- David Navarro (Vice-president Vision on the Road Group Plan at Essilorluxottica)
- Nacho Lijarcio (Project Manager and Researcher at Valencia University)
The latest Global Status Report on Road Safety, published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in December 2018, highlights that road traffic fatalities have grown, worldwide; up to of 1.35 million a year, plus 50 million road users injured as a consequence of road traffic crashes.
The evidence accumulated over the last 40 years depicts the significant impact that vision problems have on road crashes. Between 5% and 20% of traffic crashes (depending on contextual issues) are whether directly or indirectly caused/enhanced by road user’s visual problems that are majorly preventable through good policymaking and healthcare-related actions.
According to the World Report on Vision published by the WHO, at least 2.2 billion people around the world have substantial vision impairments.
In the 82nd Annual Session of the Inland Transport Committee (ITC), the widest regulatory platform of United Nations for road transport, adopted a set of recommendations for strengthening national road safety systems. One of them is a call to governments to adopt measures aimed to promote good vision for all road users was included.
In brief, vision is the main source of information on the road: some studies state that up to 90% of the information acquired during driving has a visual nature. Good vision allows drivers to accurately performing driving-related tasks and to make safe decisions.
Further, and although there is a high consensus on the fact that vision constitutes a key factor in this field, road safety actions frequently ignore visual health among their core guidelines, and road users tend to be scarcely aware on this problem. This has lead world reference organizations such as the FIA (Fédération International de l'Automobile) to carry out specific measures to alleviate the lack of awareness on the relationship between visual health and road safety, through the promotion of a new golden rule: "Check your vision", alongside with other relevant mottos, such as «Buckle your seatbelt», «Obey speed limits», and «Don’t text and drive».
The webinar will focus on visual health promotion, and road crashes, and will share some projects and experiences developed in Spain by EssilorLuxottica, Spanish Foundation for Road Safety (FESVIAL) and the University of Valencia .
FURTHER DETAILS OF INTEREST FOR PARTICIPANTS:
- Time: 2 December 2021, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm CET
- Fee: This members-only event is free-of-charge
- Location: online
- Working language: English
- Registration: The deadline for registrations is 30 November 2021.