The municipalities of Haacht, Keerbergen, and Boortmeerbeek jointly signed the SAVE charter Cities & Municipalities from Parents of Accident Victims Children-SAVE vzw (OVK) on Wednesday, September 30. With this commitment, the three municipalities, part of police zone BHK, are dedicated to creating a safe traffic environment for all road users, with particular attention to children and young people.
SAVE stands for Samen Actief voor VEilig Verkeer (Together Active for Safe Traffic). The initiative comes from Parents of Accident Victims Children, a support group for families who have lost a child in traffic and advocates for greater road safety. Through the SAVE charter, the organization aims to encourage cities and municipalities to structurally integrate road safety into their policies.
The signing marks the beginning of a process where the three municipalities, guided by OVK-SAVE, will develop their own action plan. This plan will align with the seven objectives of the SAVE charter, which include analyzing and addressing unsafe traffic points, applying the STOP principle, giving extra attention to children and young people, and maintaining a high level of enforcement and awareness regarding road safety.
Although Haacht, Keerbergen, and Boortmeerbeek are embarking on this journey together and belong to the same police zone, each municipality emphasizes its own priorities. Haacht aims for zero traffic fatalities and seeks to enhance the feeling of safety for cyclists; the most recent Municipal City Monitor indicates that 46% of residents feel safe cycling in the municipality. The municipality wants to further promote safe and independent cycling trips, especially for children and young people. Speed enforcement is a crucial part of this, with limited speeding offenses handled via GAS-5 since July 1, the deployment of a mobile LIDAR speed camera since September, and preparations for average speed checks.
Keerbergen places a strong emphasis on children, young people, and seniors. In addition to awareness campaigns, the municipality continues to work on a road network that is clear and accessible to all road users. The school route map is being updated to reflect the current traffic situation, and the network of quiet roads is being expanded to offer shorter and safer connections for pedestrians and cyclists.
In Boortmeerbeek, safe school routes and quiet roads are also a significant focus. Several quiet roads near schools will be widened, paved, and regularly maintained to serve as a viable alternative to busier roads. The municipality intends to make these safe connections better known to residents through a school route plan. Additionally, various crossing points are being addressed by locally narrowing the roadway to slow down traffic and reduce the crossing distance for pedestrians.
The three municipalities are thus starting from their own local situations but share the same ambition: to make traffic safer by combining infrastructure, enforcement, awareness, and safe routes for cyclists and pedestrians, with particular attention to the most vulnerable road users. By signing the SAVE charter, Haacht, Keerbergen, and Boortmeerbeek commit to further developing these efforts and keeping road safety structurally on the agenda, aiming to achieve the SAVE label after the action plan is implemented.
