SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Nov. 12 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Parliament of the Canary Islands hosted this Saturday a new edition of the Parliament Forum, focused on road safety and mobility. The president of the Chamber, Gustavo Matos, recalled at the opening of the day that this is the third time in the tenth legislature that road safety and mobility are discussed in the framework of the meetings organized by the institution.
“This is an issue that should be placed on the agenda,” he said at a ceremony that was attended by a very broad representation of the driving school sector, different local, insular, regional and national institutions, State Security Forces and Corps and experts in mobility and road safety.
The mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, José Manuel Bermúdez, the general secretary of the General Directorate of Traffic, María Lidón Lozano, the president of the National Association of Driving Schools, Álvaro Llamas, and the president of ACACEF and FEACA, Javier Báez.
“Traffic powers are state-owned, but holding these conferences at the headquarters of the Parliament of the Canary Islands make perfect sense, as we remember that issues such as the conservation of roads, their maintenance or the consequences of an accident on health are within the framework of competences in the Canary Islands”, said Matos.
For her part, María Lidón Lozano stressed that road safety “is a shared responsibility, so this house, which is everyone’s house, is the perfect forum to bet on it”. The secretary of the DGT stated that the institution will continue “fighting to have more examiners”, but specified that the templates are “practically complete as of today”. Lozano opted for collaboration in the sector, “because we are in the same boat and we must row together to go in the right direction.”
The mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez, also stressed that the common objective cannot be other than “to avoid accidents, achieving a more sustainable environment”. He defended the “collective effort in favor of road safety and adaptation to new mobility trends in the world”, while thanking the efforts of the Canarian associations of road training and driving schools for their work in the matter. He also expressed his support for the implementation of the preventive measures module.
Along the same lines, Álvaro Llamas warned of how a bad decision “can mark you for life.” “Not knowing how to face this responsibility forces us to open the eyes of future drivers”, he insisted, and emphasized that the implementation of the preventive training module “will make us climb one more step in road safety, which is true that it has improved much in Spain with instruments such as the permit by points”.
Javier Báez expressed the gratitude of the sector to the Parliament of the Canary Islands for its commitment to mobility and road safety. The president of ACACEF and FEACA warned of the seriousness of the “pandemic of traffic accident victims” and pointed out that, despite the fact that the data of recent decades are encouraging, “lives continue to be lost on the roads.”
In this sense, he recalled the objective of this decade to reduce the number of victims of traffic accidents to 50 percent. “Hopefully we reach the goal of none, something for which the support of the institutions is necessary, which have the obligation to legislate and do it well.” Likewise, he insisted on the sector’s demand that the mandatory minimum face-to-face awareness module be included in the training.
During the day, various round tables were held on issues of interest in the field of road safety and mobility, such as the differences in obtaining driving licenses in the different EU countries, road safety education in the school curriculum , crimes against road safety or training for a new mobility.
The president of the National High Court, José Ramón Navarro, the president of FESVIAL and professor of Road Safety, Luis Montoro González, the director of AESLEME, María del Mar Cogollos, the court prosecutor for Road Safety, Luis del Río, and the director of the Prevention and Road Safety area of Fundación Mapfre, Jesús Monclús, among others.
Parliament Forum is an initiative launched by the Parliament of the Canary Islands in this tenth legislature with the aim, in the words of the president, Gustavo Matos, of bringing the institution closer to the public and opening it up, creating a space for debate and reflection for all those issues that are of interest to the society of the eight islands. The full recording of the day is available at ,ytwww.parcan.es
