The day after the new road safety act comes into force, the abertis foundation brings together those responsible for the reform of the law to outline the main changes in it and assess the implications of the rules for drivers, associations of accident victims and the General Traffic Directorate.

Thursday 6th May 2010 saw the presentation of the strategy to raise awareness of voluntary blood donation among young people, making use of new technology and social networks in a model which it is hoped will be exported to the rest of the world, taking advantage of Barcelona being the world centre for blood donation this year.

The study entitled "Traffic prediction based on license plate scanning. Observability and optimal location of traffic counters", by María Pilar Jiménez Gómez, has won the 7th abertis Prize – in the doctoral thesis category – on Transport Infrastructure Management, which is awarded annually by the UPC-abertis chair.

The winning study develops different mathematical models in order to reproduce traffic conditions, using the licence plate scanner and proposing methods to optimise the location of the scanning points. The ultimate aim is to provide solutions to mobility problems in cities.

abertis, as a European group dedicated to mobility and telecommunications infrastructure management,  has reaffirmed the commitment it entered into in 2006 by signing the European Road Safety Charter once more. This time the commitment includes the French motorway concession operator sanef. Another first is that the abertis foundation has signed the document as a separate body for the first time. Sergi Loughney, abertis corporate institutional relations manager and Director of the abertis foundation, signed the charter on behalf of the two organisations at the event held today at the Spanish Ministry of Health.

Among its other objectives, the reform of the Road Safety Act, which comes into force in full on 24 May, will speed up and simplify the penalty procedure and is "more educational" in nature. This is one of the main conclusions reached by the conference organised today by the abertis foundation at the Palau Robert centre in Barcelona. Under the title "The New Road Safety Act", the event brought together the spokespeople for the main groups of the Congress of Deputies’ Temporary Committee on Road Safety and Accident Prevention, who have undertaken the reform of the Road Safety Act.

Castellet Castle, located between Castellet and La Gornal, headquarters of the abertis foundation, will host the second session of the meeting of international experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) organised by the Guttmann Institute to debate the main behavioural problems created by traumatic brain injury (TBI) – often caused by traffic accidents – and lay the foundations for treatment.