New collaboration between AMAK and Bolt to support road safety in Azerbaijan
On 14 May, our partners the National Automobile Club of Azerbaijan (AMAK) joined up with Bolt Azerbaijan to hold a High-Level Stakeholder Engagement and Road Safety Conference. This collaboration marks an important step towards supporting road safety initiatives in Azerbaijan.
Bolt have shown their commitment to road safety and promoting safe behaviour through the creation of the Bolt Academy, a professional training service for their drivers, and in their efforts to extend this training to schools and universities to provide students with practical skills and a sense of personal responsibility for their safety. As part of AMAK’s work to advocate for road safety and build up stakeholder engagement they and Bolt brought together representatives of several government ministries, national agencies and members of the public to discuss the current road safety challenges and opportunities for improvement in Azerbaijan.
The conference provided a valuable opportunity to involve a range of stakeholders in discussing road safety at a national level. Bolt presented its work on the digitalisation of road safety, as well as highlighting the role of technology and platform services and the experiences and safety needs of their drivers.
AMAK focused on child road safety and the importance of creating safer road environments for children, particularly around schools through evidence-based interventions and with the support of local authorities and communities. This is the central objective of their Safe School Zones initiative, supported by EASST, in which AMAK seeks to shift their approach from individual school-level interventions and implement a more systematic improvement programme supported by institutions and key stakeholders.
This project underlines the Safe System principle that responsibility for preventing death and serious injury is shared across those who design, regulate, manage and use the transport system. By connecting this initiative to general road safety issues of mobility, technology, and road user behaviour, AMAK are purposefully positioning their work to improve school zones as an interconnected part of the broader national road safety agenda rather than an isolated issue. In doing so, they are ensuring that children’s road safety continues to be highlighted in national road safety conversations.
After the conference, AMAK and Bolt formalised their commitment to creating safer roads in Azerbaijan and supporting more sustainable forms of mobility, signing a Memorandum of Understanding to lay the foundation for productive future collaboration.
Maarifa Pashayeva, Head of State Policy and Relations of Bolt Azerbaijan, said
“We believe that our cooperation with AMAK will contribute to the implementation of new projects in this direction and to the formation of a safer mobility environment in Azerbaijan.”