ACCESS Promotes Road Safety in Georgia

As a follow-up to the EWMI ACCESS’ May 20, 2016 Policy Forum on Urban Development Challenges of Tbilisi, ACCESS decided to further support advocacy efforts by a group of Georgian CSOs to address the road safety problems discussed at the Forum. For this purpose ACCESS issued targeted grant to the Georgian CSO – Georgian Alliance for Safe Roads to implement a project in coalition with other CSOs aimed at raising public awareness about the road safety problem in Georgia and building support among the Georgian government, political parties, and the public at large to push forward effective policy solutions (enforcing the points-based system of penalties, mobile cameras and more effective CCTVs,  stricter fines for over-speeding, and other).

Even though the Georgian public recognizes increasingly pertinent problem of road safety in Georgia, it is less aware of effective solutions. Over-speeding, one of the key causes of road fatalities, is not taken seriously enough. The general public is also not aware of some of the alarming statistics, such as the 40% rise of road fatalities in Tbilisi alone since last year.

Through evidence-based public awareness-raising campaign and targeted consultations with political parties and the government, the CSO Coalition will raise the public demand for resolution of the road safety problem and will advocate for adopting more effective policy and legislative solutions.