The Conference on Road Transport organised by the Directorate-General for Infrastructure, Transport and the Sea (DGITM) under the French Presidency of the European Union on the 20th of May in Paris was a great opportunity to bring together the various stakeholders in Europe looking into social rights, technological and environmental challenges related to the transport sector.

We were fortunate to have the participation of Dr. Stephane Dreher, Senior Manager at ERTICO-ITS Europe at the second round table covering questions on the future of road transport and how drivers can be supported in the face of the changes brought by technological developments and the ecological transition.

Three projects in which ERTICO is involved were discussed. Dr. Stephane Dreher started by sharing some of the key results from a study for DG MOVE coordinated by ECORYS on the impacts of automation on the transport works force based on macro-economic models. The study recommended policy actions in 3 steps: preparing for the transition by raising awareness of the positive and negative impacts of automation on the workforce, facilitating the transition by creating a dialogue among concerned stakeholders and finally managing the transition.

Dr. Stephane Dreher, then gave an overview of the ongoing activities in the EU-funded project WE-TRANSFORM which is focusing on creating a social dialogue with the aim to develop an action-oriented agenda to address the impacts of automation on the workforce for all transport modes. WE-TRANSFORM started in 2021 and recently concluded an analysis of the state of the art including the identification of sectors affected by automation, the jobs at risk, future skills needs and suggested policy actions.  Negative and positive impacts of automation on the workforce in relation to the skills and needs to facilitate the transition have been investigated based on initial stakeholder input. The project is holding its 3rd Stakeholder Workshop in Riga, Latvia and online on 15th June 2022 which will kick off the analysis of observed and collected impacts.

Finally, he mentioned results from the EU-funded project ENSEMBLE, which has addressed multi-brand truck platooning, an automated vehicle scenario which is among the most promising for early deployment and has an important human factor. The presentation triggered an exchange with other panellists on the impacts of platooning on safety and the environment.

He concluded by insisting on the need to enable social dialogue and co-creating automated mobility solutions to ensure that concerns and possible impacts can be taken into account at an early stage. He also highlighted the importance of sharing knowledge and of opening up the online Knowledge base on CCAM developed by the ARCADE project to non-experts in the future (http://connectedautomateddriving.eu)

Learn more about ERTICO’s work on Deploying Innovation.