During the course of the eSafety Challenge 2011, which took place at the ÖAMTC Safe Driving Centre close to Vienna today, three prizes were presented for excellence in the fields of Marketing & Sales, Driver Training, and Car Dealership. The awards went to AXA Winterthur, ÖAMTC Fahrtechnik Professional Driver Academy and Audi AG.
The Excellence in Marketing & Sales prize went to Swiss insurance firm AXA Winterthur due to their highly visible road safety information campaign, ran by the AXA Foundation of Prevention with the BFU (Council for Accident Prevention), which helped to create awareness of eSafety-related accident prevention technologies. A particular feature of the winner’s work was the development of the auto-iq.ch website to promote eSafety technologies, again with the aim of reducing accidents in Switzerland (http://www.auto-iq.ch/initiative/ziel/).
Bettina Sinzig, Head of AXA Accident Research explained, ‘The relevance of driver assistant systems to effectively avoid serious accidents is proven. In order to fully tap their potential for road safety, it is key to raise public awareness. This is what our campaign is aiming for’.
The Excellence in Driver Training prize was awarded to ÖAMTC Fahrtechnik Professional Driver Academy because of a proven and significant decrease in accidents (up to 40% sustainable) and fuel consumption (up to 10% sustainable) that could be directly attributed to the training programmes of the competence centre for truck and bus drivers. The programme focuses on the legal mandatory education of professional drivers, as well as the promotion of voluntary education. This includes braking-, safety- and eco-training (to reduce fuel consumption) together with training schemes for drivers of lorries, buses and emergency rescue vehicles.
‘Road Safety includes all partners involved in traffic. Even if the number of trucks and buses is small compared to the number of private vehicles, they play an important role in the entire traffic system. It is for this reason that ÖAMTC participated actively in the development of training schemes for this group. I am very proud that our initiative has been awarded with the eSafety excellence price’ said Werner Kraus, President of ÖAMTC.
Audi AG was the winner in the Excellence in Car Dealership category after the company trained around 10,000 dealers in the benefits of eSafety technologies during the launch of the new A6. These include Warning and Emergency Braking Systems, Lane Support Systems, Lane Departure Warning, and Blind Spot Monitoring.
Audi developed a special module where dealers could experience the technologies for themselves in a safe environment, at all stages of the system. The competences of the trainers, the high quality of the training over more than 16 weeks, and the efforts made to allow the dealers understand the benefits of the systems are quite simply a benchmark for other car-makers to follow.
FIA Global Road Safety Ambassador, Michelle Yeoh, said 'the winners of the eSafety Challenge prizes have shown remarkable dedication to road safety. By promoting the deployment of life saving systems they can help us meet the Decade of Action's goals’.
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