Joel's road show
by Vincent Ciccarello
Sitting
in the Palais des Nations, the office of the United Nations in
Geneva, Switzerland, on your first overseas trip would be quite a
thrill. But being there as a delegate at the World Youth Assembly
for Road Safety as part of the inaugural UN Global Road Safety Week
takes that experience to another level.
Urban planning graduate Joel Taggart recently represented South Australia as a member of the eight-person Australian delegation at the Assembly, with the sponsorship of the Royal Automobile Association and the State Government.
Taggart, a development assessment planner at the City of Salisbury, became interested in transport issues during his undergraduate program.
"Sustainability is possibly the most important transport issue – the need to get people onto public transport and away from individual transport," he said.
"Also, as we plan urban environments, we should try to make them more conducive to public transport use, for example, by integrating services such as shopping centres with public transport hubs such as train stations."
But he also learned that road safety also plays an important role that is often overlooked in urban planning.
"When we design roads or new urban environments, we often look at the practicalities and economics before considering how they impact on cyclists, pedestrians and the elderly," he said.
It prompted him to join the State Government-sponsored Salisbury Community Road Safety Group, where he shares his ideas on how to make roads safer. It also led him to put up his hand to attend the World Youth Assembly.
A major outcome of the Assembly was the endorsement of a Youth Road Safety Declaration, which will be put to the UN General Assembly later this year. Taking part, Taggart said, was an exciting and thought-provoking experience.
"It was good to travel overseas and to meet people from about 100 different countries," he said. "And it was good to exchange ideas and find out how things are in their countries."
The Assembly’s focus on youth road safety aimed to address how youth can positively influence road safety and ways of reducing road trauma resulting from inexperience on the roads, especially in developing and populous countries. Australia’s approach to youth road safety, he said, rates highly.
"I learnt how good Australia actually is and how advanced we are compared to a lot of countries, with our whole promotion of road safety."