Skip to main content

IRF appoints new global road safety champion

The International Road Federation has a new spearhead for its global road safety programme. Michael Dreznes will serve as the Federation's (IRF) executive vice president with worldwide leadership on training, policy and capacity-building activities.
March 2, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
The 713 International Road Federation has a new spearhead for its global road safety programme. Michael Dreznes will serve as the Federation’s (IRF) executive vice president with worldwide leadership on training, policy and capacity-building activities.

"Mike has spent the last twenty-six years working to make roads safer around the world," said Patrick Sankey, president and chief executive of IRF in Washington DC, the United States, where Dreznes will be based. "He is recognised as one of the world's leading experts on roadside safety, pioneering the concept of Forgiving Highways, and we are thrilled to have him lead the road safety initiatives of IRF."

Sankey said one of Dreznes’s key areas of responsibility will be to work with road authorities around the world to use IRF's Safer Roads by Design executive road safety training.

Speaking about his new role Dreznes said: "IRF is where I can truly make a difference. Too many countries around the world are using obsolete roadside safety measures and technologies that should have been replaced twenty years ago.

"I will collaborate with road authorities, concessionaires, design consulting engineers, academia and other safety stakeholders to encourage the replacement of outdated technology and to introduce state-of-the-art practices in countries around the world, thereby assisting governments with their commitment to the 3262 United Nations Decade of Action to reduce fatalities by 50% by 2020," Dreznes said.

The co-chairman of the 2774 Transportation Research Board Roadside Safety Design Subcommittee on International Research Activities, Dreznes is also a member of the TRB AFB20 Committee on Roadside Safety Design.

Founded in 1948, the IRF is a non-governmental, not-for-profit organization with members from both the public and private sectors in 90 countries worldwide.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Swarco inaugurates new glass bead factory in lower Austria
    July 11, 2022
    Glass microspheres are a versatile product. They are used as reflectors to create nighttime visibility of road markings and traffic signs to improve road safety. But they also have multiple uses in non-traffic applications, whether as blasting media in surface treatment, as filler beads for the compaction of plastics, in additive manufacturing / 3D printing, and water filtering techniques, to name just a few.
  • PPRS Nice 2018: maintenance moves mountains
    June 22, 2018
    Strategic maintenance was a major theme at the second Pavement Preservation and Recycling Summit in Nice, France. The world is changing, mobility is changing and so roads must change and adapt for the future.” With this brief statement, Jacques Tavernier opened the second PPRS Summit. “At the same time there is a growing awareness of poor or non-existent maintenance for highways. The question for this conference is how to adapt road maintenance in the face of this challenge,” said Tavernier, in his role as
  • The IRF World Road Meeting 2017 awaits you…
    October 19, 2017
    “With two months to the WRM 2017, I invite you to this global event which promises to be an excellent forum to hobnob with senior professionals in the industry and forge promising associations,” Kiran K Kapila, IRF chairman. This global event scheduled to be held in Delhi, India on November 14-17, 2017 is shaping up as a high profile event with confirmation of the participation of senior professionals from the road and mobility sectors of a number of countries. These include Abu Dhabi, Australia, Bangladesh
  • VolvoGroup makes strategic investment in DriveCam
    February 14, 2013
    Volvo Group Venture Capital, a Volvo Group subsidiary, has made a strategic investment in global driver risk management firm DriveCam – making Volvo Group a minority shareholder in the company. “Volvo Group and DriveCam have a common vision - to reduce traffic accidents worldwide,” said Johan Carlsson, president of Volvo Group Venture Capital. “Complementary to our leading position in the global truck manufacturing market, Volvo Group is also focused on the human element in reducing accidents, an area where