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concessionaires, design consulting engineers, academia and other safety stakeholders to encourage the replacement of outdated technology and to introduce state-of-the-art practices in countries around the world, thereby assisting governments with their commitment to the 3262 United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

  • IRF calling for road safety presentations for Saudi Arabia and Washington DC events
    October 12, 2015
    The International Road Federation (IRF) is calling for presentations on road safety for events in Saudi Arabia and Washington DC. These presentations should be on Roadside Safety, Work Zone Safety and Vulnerable User Safety. They will be made at the IRF Middle East Regional Congress in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from December 15th to December 17th, 2015.
  • Key IRF event for Middle East
    March 2, 2012
    The International Road Federation's event in the Gulf & Middle East Region in the capital of the Kingdom of Bahrain comes amid calls for efforts to meet the challenges posed by the region's growing demand for mobility and movement of goods.
  • Dubai to host the 18th IRF World Meeting & Exhibition planned for 2021
    February 10, 2020
    Dubai, one of the world’s iconic cities, has been designated to host the International Road Federation’s World Meeting & Exhibition on November 8th-11th, 2021.
  • Safer Roads: More Than Just Progress on Paper
    June 8, 2016
    As the co-chairman of Pillar II (“Safer roads and mobility”) of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration, I was privileged to be in New York on April 15, 2016 as the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on “improving global road safety” sponsored by 56 UN member states. By a bitter twist of fate, this resolution came to pass as many countries around the world are reporting a notable increase in injuries and deaths on their roads, including in countries that had seen a steady decline