General Meeting 2009

DRUID Steering Committee together with Maria Cristina Marolda (European Commission) during the General Meeting at BASt 2009.

This year's DRUID General meeting took place at the BASt premises in Bergisch Gladbach. More than 90 participants of the 37 DRUID partner institutions attended the annual meeting between September 28th and October 1st 2009. The delegates showed great interest in discussing the project progress and in sharing their achievements. In addition to the plenary session many Work-Package meetings and workshops were conducted.

While some partners have started later (for instance Work-Package 6 - Withdrawal), others have already successfully completed their activities (Work-Package 5 - Rehabilitation). An increasing number of results (deliverables) is being published and ready for download on the DRUID website.

The road transport system is one of the most hazardous and most expensive in terms of human lives in the European Union. As the EC White Paper "European transport policy for 2010 : time to decide" suggests, the present level of investment in road safety doesn't correspond to the severity of the situation. The EU spends currently less than 5 % of the total cost caused by road accidents on developing safety countermeasures. However, a modern European transport system capable of upholding sustainable development within the EU must be reliable, safe and efficient. Furthermore the European Commission has announced the objective to reduce the number of road deaths in the EU by 50 %.

DRUID Consortium during General Meeting at BASt, 2009.

It appears that impaired driving is still one of the major causes for road accidents. Consumption of psychoactive substances such as alcohol, drugs and certain medicines are likely to endanger the drivers aptitude. This is where DRUID comes in. The objective of this project is to provide scientific support to the EU transport policy makers by suggesting guidelines and measures to combat impaired driving.

The Integrated Project DRUID, financed by the 6th EU Framework Program, was launched on October 15th 2006. The project, co-ordinated by the Federal Highway Research Institute of Germany (BASt) has a total budget of about 23.7 Million Euro and will run for a total time of five years. More than 30 institutions and experts from 18 European countries will co-operate to gain new insights to the real degree of impairment caused by psychoactive substances and their actual impact on road safety.