Below, in the In-Depth section, you will find the summary of the 131st GTB Session that had a participation of 80 experts attending live in Berlin and virtually from around the world.This summary provides me with an opportunity to share my conviction about the importance of GTB to innovation and its impact upon road safety.
GTB was created in Lucerne, 70 years ago in September 1951 and in May 2022 will reach the 70th anniversary of its first working meeting, held in Brussels. During its first 25 years, before the creation of GRE in 1977, GTB drafted all the UNECE lighting and light-signalling regulations that were directly adopted by WP29. After the creation of GRE, GTB has continued to be the main contributor to the evolution of the UN Regulations that has followed the rapidly increasing rate of lighting innovation. Thanks to its various presidents, its secretaries, and its members, GTB has strongly supported industry and regulators to exploit the high level of innovation and dramatically improve safety of nightime driving.
At this point I want to thank Geoff Draper for his great job at GTB, trying session after session to obtain agreements to drive projects to a regulation. As President from 2008 to 2020, and with the support of GTB Secretary Davide Puglisi and GTB Vice President Bart Terburg, he led the modernisation and reorganisation of the GTB committees and working groups to improve the quality of proposals to update the regulations and reduce the time to develop them for consideration at GRE.
I also want to thank Davide Puglisi, the Secretary General who is doing a great job leading GTB and also as the secretary of the highly important GRE Informal Group working on simplification and harmonisation of the technical requirements.
Additionally I congratulate and I thank the new GTB Administrative Committee, led by Valter Genone who took his position as President in January 2021, and supported by Bart Terburg recently re-elected as Vice President and Davide Puglisi. They have ensured that GTB has achieved a soft transition following Geoff’s departure.
Finally, I appreciate the excellent work of Timo Kärkkäinen, GRE Chairman, as he masterfully leads GRE and its heavy work program via virtual and hybrid meetings through the pandemic.
When DVN readers not involved in regulatiory matters follow the summary below, they will probably be surprised by the apparently weak decisions. But semester after semester, meeting after meeting, the decisions resulting from the GTB democratic processes open the way to regulatory changes to facilitate innovations whilst aiming to avoid negative impact upon safety.
As Davide Puglisi has emphasised in his recent lectures, GTB can work as fast as the UN regulatory process will allow. Please, automotive industry leaders, help GTB to work efficiently by providing your active support, attending meetings, and facilitating decisions with high quality proposals instead of criticising GTB for being slow to act. The GTB job is difficult indeed, but its success is in your hands!
Sincerely yours
