BVF Congress in Berlin
The BVF’s Congress, the German Association of Driving Schools, took place in Berlin on November 14th and 15th.
This year’s meeting was once again impressive, with approximately 2,000 attendees. BVF President Jurgen Kopp and Vice President Kurt Bartels performed excellently.
It was a pleasure for the EFA Board to participate in the event and to send a message that Europe is united and has often followed the German training model as a point of reference.
The German training model, as it is currently structured, is a reference for all European Countries.
It is hoped that in the coming years there will be no changes to the training model that could reduce the level of quality training offered daily by German driving schools.
EFA Vice Presidents Stefan Ebner and Manuel Picardi presented some of the latest developments related to the new Driving Licences Directive and the role EFA has played in introducing training as a replacement for part of the exams. These include the possibility of eliminating the Code 78 and obtaining a BE license, both through mandatory training. The possibility for Member States to introduce a mandatory First Aid Course as an alternative to part of the theory exam was also mentioned.
BVF Event
BVF and WKO Board Members
EFA visits EDISER Stand
Jurgen Kopp, Manuel Picardi, Stefan Ebner
TRUST Project Meeting in Athens and New TRUST Website
The second meeting of the EU-funded TRUST project, of which EFA is an active partner, was held in Greece on November 18th and 19th.
Special thanks go to George Yannis of NTUA for hosting the event at the Athens School of Engineering.
The progress made by some partners in determining the strategy to be pursued to achieve the desired results, namely the definition of a Road Safety Culture, was very interesting. In upcoming articles, you can find a description of the new TRUST project website.
EFA was asked to join the international consortium to contribute to the project’s road safety training, in collaboration with several universities and research centers, particularly in the introduction of new training modules for light mobility, aimed at young people aged 15 to 18.
The TRUST website has been completed: Traffic Safety Culture used to be an ambiguous term and a boundary concept, used in different and sometimes contradictory ways. If we want to leverage Traffic Safety Culture, we need to know what it is but also what it is not. Only then can we concisely measure it to assess in an evidence-based way whether we are actually making progress with cultural interventions.
We are providing an operational definition of Traffic Safety Culture and its constituting factors (such as beliefs, attitudes, norms, values) that is suitable for modelling the impact on road safety, developing measuring tools to assess where we are at as well as for planning and testing appropriate interventions.
Visit the website of the new road safety project funded by the European Union!
The Association of Driving Schools of the Czech Republic has elected new leadership for the period 2026-2031
The General Meeting of the Association of Driving Schools of the Czech Republic was held on Friday, November 21st in the pleasant surroundings of the Port Hotel near Máchova Jezera. The event was attended by more than 110 driving school teachers, 10 partners of the Association of Driving Schools and other exhibitors from the field of driver education. After a short introduction of all the important guests and partners, the Chairman of the Association of Driving Schools Aleš Horčička took the floor.
He presented a number of successful events that the Association of Driving Schools of the Czech Republic has implemented in recent months and years. These include projects to increase road safety Movitren, StartDriving, Days for Mentors L17, Digital Driving School, the Academy of Driving School Education and others. More than 100 thousand mentors have already participated in the L17 project.
The program then moved on to the elections of the new Executive Board of the Association of Driving Schools for the period 2026-2031. First, the members of the Association of Driving Schools thanked Mr. Jan Černý for his many years of activity, who has already reached retirement age and will not continue on the Executive Board. Subsequently, a new Executive Board was elected, which was newly joined by Michal Hebeda from Pilsen.
The newly elected Executive Board then left the meeting room and elected new statutory bodies for the period 2026-2030.
New Executive Board:
· Vítězslav Fila
· Martin Aujezdský
· Václav Volf
· Radek Šetka
· Jiří Martínek
· Michal Kubeš
· Miloš Šlajchrt
· Michal Hebeda
· Ondřej Horázný – Vice-Chairman of the Association of Driving Schools of the Czech Republic
· Jiří Novotný – Vice-Chairman of the Association of Driving Schools of the Czech Republic
· Aleš Horčička – Chairman of the Association of Driving Schools of the Czech Republic
However, the General Meeting was not only about the election of the new Executive Board and statutory bodies, but a number of exhibitors were prepared in the foyer, who presented various teaching options through virtual reality, teaching simulators, teaching aids and books, training vehicles and motorcycles and more.
The election of the Executive Board was followed by a series of expert lectures by the Ministry of Transport, CENDIS and also a speech by Jiří Novotný, who presented current events and news from the activities of the EFA (European Federation of Driving Schools). The Driving School Association also honoured members of the Driving School Ombudsman project team, which helps raise the level and sophistication of the field of driver education.
Jiří Novotný – Aleš Horčička – Ondřej Horázný
Jiří Novotný
Ondřej Horázný
Driving Under the Influence (DUI) – ERSC
Despite progress in reducing road fatalities, alcohol and drug abuse continues to cause thousands of preventable accidents each year. The European Road Safety Charter (ERSC) organised an online session bringing together road safety experts, researchers, and civil society representatives to share the latest data, prevention strategies, and innovative initiatives that make a real difference.
The topics covered were:
– Cutting-edge research on drunk driving
– Successful national campaigns, such as “High Lässt fahren”
– Practical approaches to rehabilitation and law enforcement
– Results of the EU-funded FitDRIVE and PANACEA projects
On 19th November our EFA member from Lithuania, The Guild of Driving teachers, participated in the webinar, organised by European Road Safety Charter „Driving Under the Influence – A Road Safety Priority“, dedicated to one of Europe’s most persistent road safety challenges – DUI.
Dr. Mindaugas Vilkickas, the executive of the Guild, presented the report „The current system of Driving course for Traffic offenders in Lithuania“, about the officially mandatory courses for traffic offenders in Lithuania, also known as „Additional training for drivers“. These courses are also mandatory for the drivers, sanctioned for DUI; this is a part of administrative penalties in order to regain their driving licenses.
The content of this training was presented, including a little bit of available statistical information. The problems and challenges, which encountered during the implementation of these trainings, were also presented. This may be valuable insights for countries that intend to implement similar trainings.
Below you can download the Dr. Vilkickas’s presentation
Driving Licence Directive Technical Roundtable
On November 27th, the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) organised an online session focused on the implementation of international driving licence legislation and emphasized the need for collaboration among stakeholders. Participants outlined the necessary steps for effective implementation and discussed the importance of financial support for new drivers in Member States.
EFA presented the collaboration with ERC that began in 2021 and the tangible results achieved in the new Driving License Directive.
The EFA and ERC collaboration will continue in 2026 for driving instructor training. Stay connected with us!
Driving Licence Directives
It’s official: The new European Directives on driving licenses and driver disqualification were published in early November 2025!
Below you will find links to EUR-Lex, available in multiple languages.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:L_202502205
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ%3AL_202502206
EFA is very satisfied with the work done and the contribution the association has made to the EU Commission in publishing a directive that increasingly takes training into account.
Quality driver training is an investment, not a cost.
Music as an underestimated prevention factor: The Europe-wide campaign “Max-Achtzig: A Trucker’s Fate – Watch out!”
Rear-end collisions in European road freight transport are rare but extremely severe, especially for truck drivers. Since 2018, the initiative Hellwach mit 80 km/h has been committed to preventing these fatal crashes. With its new campaign, “Max-Achtzig: A Trucker’s Fate – Watch out!”, the association introduces a completely new idea: using a song as an emotional communication tool to reach professional drivers more directly and effectively.
The campaign is based on the insight that music strongly influences emotions, attention and awareness. Since drivers spend long hours on the road listening to music, the association created a track specifically designed for them — a song that speaks about the risks of rear-end collisions and the psychological pressures of the profession in an empathetic and immediate way. This approach aims to have a greater impact than traditional communication based on facts, slogans or formal appeals, which often fail under conditions of stress, fatigue and monotony.
The campaign also highlights the significant psychological impact of accidents, affecting not only victims but also the drivers involved. Recent studies show that each road fatality leads to dozens of stress disorders, many of which affect professional drivers.
Independent monitoring started in 2019 shows that today truck drivers are more than three times as likely to die in rear-end collisions at the end of traffic jams as car occupants — a figure that contradicts common stereotypes and calls for a new type of communication.
In this context, the campaign’s song becomes an innovative tool to raise awareness, create emotional engagement and keep drivers alert on the road.
EU transport in figures – Statistical pocketbook 2025
Transport represents a crucial sector of the economy. This publication provides an overview of the most recent and most pertinent annual transport-related statistics in Europe. It covers the European Union and its 27 Member States (EU-27) and, as far as possible, the current EU candidate countries, the EFTA countries and UK. The content of this pocketbook is based on a range of sources including Eurostat, international organisations and associations, national statistics and, where no data were available, own estimates. Own estimates have mainly been produced to get an idea of the EU total. At the level of individual countries, they are merely indicative and should by no means be interpreted as official data.
