About the 3M Award

The 3M Traffic Safety Innovation Award is based on the Safe System approach. The Safe System approach aims for a more forgiving road system that takes human fallibility and vulnerability into account. Under a Safe System we design the whole transport system to protect people from death and serious injury.

Under the Safe System approach, all system designers must share the responsibility for road safety outcomes. System designers include planners, engineers, parents, policy makers, enforcement officers, educators, utility providers, insurers, vehicle manufacturers and importers, the media, fleet managers and many more.

The award seeks any participants in the system design to put forward proposals that show innovative thinking under one of the four pillars of the Safe System approach: Safe roads and roadsides; Safe speeds; Safe road use; Safe vehicles.

Describe your (team’s) innovative achievement in implementing one of the pillars of the Safe System approach. This should be no more than 10 pages in total, including supporting material. Please describe the need for the intervention, the innovative thinking involved, the effectiveness of the intervention, and the extent of the benefits to a wide range of transport system users.

The winner of the award will be announced at the Transportation Group conference in Auckland in May 2021.
The winner or team leader of the winning project will win a trip to the 2022 ATSSA conference in USA and will visit the 3M head office. The winning project will also be promoted by 3M and the Transportation Group through media and industry channels.

Entries for the award open 1st December 2020 and close 5pm 29th January 2021. The winner will be announced at the Auckland conference.