FIA LAUNCHES ROAD SAFETY INDEX TO IMPROVE ORGANISATIONS’ SAFETY FOOTPRINT

The FIA is launching today the FIA Road Safety Index to onboard organisations in the effort for safer roads by enabling them to measure and improve their safety footprint.

The FIA Road Safety Index provides organisations with a methodology to assess their road safety performance and calculate their safety footprint, relying on a similar concept as the carbon footprint calculators. The safety footprint of an organisation refers to the number of fatalities and seriously injured persons as a result of road crashes occurring within its entire value chain.

Commenting on the launch, FIA Deputy President for Automobile Mobility and Tourism Tim Shearman said, “The FIA Road Safety Index is a milestone for traffic safety and it is one of the FIA’s contributions to achieve the United Nations’ target of halving road traffic deaths and injuries by 2030. The Index will help organisations report on their ambitions, actions, and results. It is a true evidence-based prevention tool that is made available to contribute to building a culture of safe mobility. It is my hope that responsible businesses will embrace it to measure their safety footprint and that, ultimately, it will enable to improve safety worldwide, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where the vast majority of road crashes occur.”

The Index offers a systematic approach to identify organisations’ value chains, and assess how traffic safety is affected by their range of services or products. It is built on a rating system which helps evaluate to what extent an organisation is managing its safety impact.

Before its official launch, the FIA Road Safety Index project began in 2020 with a Feasibility Study that allowed to define a prototype. Since the autumn of 2021, Autoliv, IKEA, TotalEnergies, the Swedish transport administration Trafikverket, and two FIA Clubs, the Automobile Club Association (ACA – France) and the Automóvil Club del Uruguay (ACU) have taken part in six pilot projects. The pilot phase allowed to finalise the detailed methodology for the first three stages of the six-step evaluation that is now available to all organisations around the world.  

“Autoliv’s vision is “saving more lives”. The implementation of safe system principles into the value chain and operations of public and private organisations everywhere is a game changer for global road safety. The FIA Road Safety Index is the first practical proposal of how this might be done and evaluated. Being part of piloting and refining the FIA Road Safety Index has reconfirmed how important this approach will be, but also brought to light the practical challenges of implementing it,” declared Autoliv VP Research Dr. Cecilia Sunnevang.

“Safety is fundamental in IKEA Supply Chain Operations. We recognise our shared responsibility to enhance road safety and to achieve global road safety goals as outlined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. One area that we focus on right now is incident reporting and measuring our road safety footprint. To gain speed, we took part in the pilot of the FIA Road Safety Index. Our ambition is that, together with other companies,  we can benchmark and learn from each other,” stated IKEA Supply Chain Operations Sustainability Manager Elisabeth Munck af Rosenschöld.

“The FIA Road Safety Index is an ambitious project as it places road safety at the heart of the concerns of companies around the world. We are very proud to have contributed to the pilot phase in designing a unified application manual and having it tested in our areas of activities. Once implemented, this Index will be an opportunity to assert the importance of road safety as a major sustainability lever,” stated Senior Vice President Citizenship Engagement & General Delegate of TotalEnergies Foundation Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier.

“ACA France has been involved in road safety for over 100 years, notably through multiple driver training operations. We are pleased to have participated in the pilot phase of the FIA Road Safety Index. This new tool will allow a transparent and universal benchmark of the efforts made by each company or organisation to reduce its road safety footprint,” declared ACA France International Affairs Advisor Christian Scholly.

The methodology will be further expanded in 2023, thanks to the support of the FIA Foundation, and will include specific modules to increase the safety of employees, contractors, third parties, and clients or customers.

For more information on the FIA Road Safety Index and its implementation, please click here.  

The FIA Road Safety Index is run by a project group within AFRY, an international engineering, design and advisory company.