This week the best minds working on cycling safety are coming to my home town!
The 8th International Cycling Safety Conference (ICSC2019) is being held in Brisbane this week on the 18-20 November 2019 at QUT.
This is the first time this conference has been held in Australasia.
This event is hosted by the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety-Queensland (CARRS-Q).
Included among the delegates attending are Australian and international keynote speakers, advocacy groups, researchers, practitioners, businesses and policymakers.
This conference includes research presentations, workshops, technical tours, poster presentations, networking opportunities and other social events.
What is on?
The conference goes for 3 days and is jam-packed full of sessions.
The program also boasts a host of international guests, with delegates coming in from the Netherlands, New Zealand, Denmark, Japan, Norway, USA, Sweden, Canada and as the host country – Australia has a very strong representation from pretty much every University nationwide.
Presentation sessions are discussing ideas such as: obstacle avoidance manoeuvres, e-scooters/e-bikes, infrastructure challenges, rider/pedestrian conflicts, traffic control, crash data, bikeshare data and social media interfaces, and lane marking/intersection analysis, bicycle delivery modalities, and studies using agent-based modelling – and more!
I ‘m not attending this conference because I prefer to focus on the positive aspects of bicycle riding – which of course safety is part of…I just don’t want to be constantly working with ‘negatives’ such as crash figures, injuries and traffic hot zones and contestations – also crunching quantitative data is not my strongest research skill. But I appreciate that this is super interesting to many cycling researchers and policymakers. Such conversations and information sharing is critical to progressing more innovative solutions to cycling dilemmas and to increase the take up of biking universally.
Daily synopsis
Monday is the first conference day. The day is split into four sessions under two main streams: Workshops and Technical Tours. The two workshops offered are: Low-cost infrastructure for low cycling countries and Using bikes for all kinds of deliveries. Concurrently there are 5 technical tours: Inner City (x 2), Riverside, Bicentennial Bikeway and Connecting the infrastructure. The evening is the Welcome Reception and Stakeholder Dinner.
Tuesday before morning tea is official registrations, Introduction and Opening Keynote Trends and innovation research in cycling safety by Prof Christopher Cheery (Uni of Tennessee, USA).
Then there are 2 rooms running concurrent 20 min presentation sessions all the way up to afternoon tea except for a Conference Plenary and another Keynote Cycling Infrastructure: if you build it, will come? (and will they be safe?) by Dr Glen Koorey (ViaStrada, NZ) after lunch.
Tuesday afternoon session has two 1-hour Rapid Oral Presentation sessions followed by Meet the Poster Author’s Function and then the official Conference Dinner.
Wednesday morning opens with a Conference Panel session entitled Arising trends & challenges: what, why & how. Then a full day of 1-hour and 20 min concurrent presentation sessions all the way up to 4.30pm… Phew – what a long day!
At 4.30 it is ICSC Awards and official conference close. The final official event is the Peoples’ Night from 5pm.
Then it’s party time!
People’s Night
For the first time, the ICSC community is inviting the general public to attend the Cycling Conference free People’s Night.
I love the idea of a conference having a ‘People’s Night.’ Every conference should have one!
This is a unique opportunity to meet, discuss and network with conference delegates, check out the digital research poster, hear about some of the latest innovations, technology, infrastructure, developments, trends and findings in cycling safety research.
This event is offered in the spirit of the conference guiding principle to share cycling safety research with ALL stakeholders – which I think is a great move. Not everyone is interested or can afford the money or time to attend the whole conference, but to open up your doors and invite the local public an opportunity to interact with delegates is a very smart move – good for the conference, good for the locals!
I’ll be heading in for this event, so if you are in Brisbane on Wednesday night, I might see you there! If you would like to attend you can RSVP via the ICSC FB page HERE. Details below.
Date: Wednesday 20
November
Time: 5pm-6.30pm
Venue: The Cube, P Block, QUT Gardens Point Campus, Brisbane
Cost: Free
Inclusions: Complimentary food and non-alcoholic beverages
If you are riding your bike in and around Brisbane this week, check out the ICSC. Always good to get the latest intel of what is happening in the cycling world!
Hopefully, the safer it is to ride a bike, the more people will ride.
If that is the case, get ya conference on ICSC 2019!!
