On February 25 – 26, 2015 Minsk hosted a meeting for the project “Be-Safe” acting within the framework of the European program Tempus. The department “Traffic management” of BelSUT (Belarusian State University of Transport) (the head of the department is S.A. Azemsha) has become one of the European grant winners. European counterpart universities which have got the right to participate in the project along with BelSUT are located in the UK, Greece and Italy.
Tempus is the program funded by the European Union, aimed at supporting the modernization of higher education in the partner countries of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Western Balkans and the Mediterranean. The program promotes the expansion of cooperation in the field of higher education between the EU and partner countries and promotes voluntary integration of the higher education systems of partner countries in All-European processes.
The project “Be-Safe” aims to transfer to Belarus the most modern knowledge and good practices developed in Europe in the field of road safety. Based on the concepts and knowledge gained in the framework of the European Observatory on road safety, the objectives of the project are:
• development and testing in Belarus of two Master's programs of stage 1 according to the standards of the Bologna process, one for engineering departments and one for economics departments;
• “training for trainers” is the support for local professors to establish and maintain the Master’s degree program;
• support of each local university equipped with the laboratory to address the problems related to road safety;
• distribution of the information about importance of research in the field of road traffic safety via information bulletins, events, practical classes and seminars;
• creation of national coordinated network of universities, state bodies, private companies and non-governmental organizations for road safety through local universities in a wider European network of research centers to ensure road traffic safety.
These problems will be addressed due to a combination of such measures as: teaching, training, conferences and public events, distribution and operation web-activities. This set of activities will be addressed to scientists, state bodies, private companies, population as a whole. Upon the end of the project the main results will be as follows:
• officially approved by the Ministry of Education the Master’s degree in the field of road safety;
• internationalization of the road safety research;
• road safety network in the Republic of Belarus;
• Belarusian road safety observatory.