IntOroads – an association that focuses on road safety

President, Ottavia Calamani: “Road safety is regulated by rules that have been outdated for decades, a turnaround is needed”

Intoroads – International Organization for Road Safety, a European association that aims to do research, studies and tests on road equipment in order to assess their behavior contextualized to the current mobility scenario.
We talk about this with the president, Ottavia Calamani, who is also CEO of AISICO, Europe’s leading road equipment testing company and a founding member of IntOroadS.

Ottavia Calamani, how the idea for IntOroadS was born

The idea was born about a year ago while talking with Prof. Marco Anghileri of the Polytechnic University of Milan about the regulations governing the use of road equipment today. We agreed that almost all road equipment is regulated by outdated standards, some as old as 30 years and no longer in line with current traffic conditions. Although the problem is widely known, we agreed that in order to change a technical standard, it is necessary to be able to have experimental evidence in order for a new standard to actually be an improvement over the previous one. IntOroadS starts from exactly this.

How does IntOroadS differ from other industry associations?

As mentioned, IntOroadS represents a uniqueness in the landscape of road safety organizations. Our goal, in fact, is not to address regulatory issues from social, political, and legislative perspectives. Our goal is to provide scientific evidence to show that regulations need to be continually updated because reference conditions are continually changing. In the area of road safety, the fact is particularly striking: the automotive industry invests considerable resources in vehicle refinement, with particular reference to the safety of the vehicle itself. In contrast, these technologically advanced vehicles run on roads made with criteria that are about half a century old. And never adequate.

How was the market reception of this initiative?

As always, new initiatives generate mistrust, especially in Italy, although it is not clear whether the mistrust is due to real perplexity or to the fear that any changes will alter a state of affairs in which, for better or worse, many operate with satisfaction. This is obviously at the expense of road safety. In Europe, however, it has been viewed with much interest, so much so that today, about a year after its establishment, several European road authorities and manufacturers have already joined.

What are the goals of IntOroadS?

Main objective is to provide our contribution to improve road safety. It is not possible to operate within an issue as sensitive as road safety without having a vision projected into the future, at least 20 years into the future. We aim for this vision to be shared by others in the industry who too often look at the present and forget about the future.