Walter Niewöhner (2nd from left) has been honored with the European Commercial Vehicle Safety Award. EVU President Jörg Ahlgrimm (right), DVR head of department Jacqueline Lacroix (2nd from right) and Oliver Deiters, Head of the DEKRA Representative Office at the EU, congratulated him.   

Walter Niewöhner honored with the European Commercial Vehicle Safety Award


Stuttgart / Strasbourg, October 27th, 2022 

Walter Niewöhner has been honored with the European Commercial Vehicle Safety Award 2022. The long-time DEKRA accident researcher received the prize, which has been awarded jointly by the European Association for Accident Research and Analysis (EVU), the expert organization DEKRA and the German Road Safety Council (DVR) every year since 1990. The award ceremony took place during the EVU annual meeting at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

“In Walter Niewöhner, we are once again honoring a personality who has rendered outstanding services to road safety with a focus on the commercial vehicle sector,” said EVU President Jörg Ahlgrimm. “The large number of projects he has initiated, carried out and published in research and practice is formidable. And I am sure we will be hearing a lot more from him in the coming years about further initiatives to improve road safety, especially for commercial vehicles.”

Walter Niewöhner comes from Bremerhaven and studied mechanical engineering in Hanover, specializing in vehicle technology. During his studies, he worked for six years in accident research at the Hanover Medical School. Among other things, he was involved in the project now known as GIDAS (German In-Depth Accident Study).

In 1989, he began his career at DEKRA Accident Research in Stuttgart and worked on numerous national and international research projects – for example, the findings from the German Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) project on the hazards to pedestrians and cyclists still have an impact today. Other projects dealt with safe truck cabs, tankers and vans, and the field of vision of truck drivers, among other things. Walter Niewöhner was co-developer of the mirror adjustment scheme created by DEKRA, Daimler and MAN and initiator of the regular DEKRA surveys on seat belt use rates in commercial vehicles.

Since 2019, Walter Niewöhner has been responsible for International Committees in DEKRA's Political Communications. In addition to DEKRA's representation in IRTAD (International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group) since 2004, he represents the international vehicle inspection association CITA in UNECE working groups on automated and connected vehicles (GRVA), among other things. He has also contributed his expertise to the annual DEKRA Road Safety Report since 2007, when the first report was starting to be compiled. Also, the interactive DEKRA Vision Zero map with cities that have already achieved the goal of zero traffic fatalities in built-up areas in at least one year is based on his initiative.

“There has been tremendous progress in recent decades with regard to commercial vehicle safety. On the one hand, this concerns passive safety, but on the other hand, especially in the more recent past, it also concerns active safety in the form of high-performance assistance systems,” says DVR head of department Jacqueline Lacroix. “The development departments of vehicle manufacturers have always relied not only on their own research results, but also on independent ones. We honor Walter Niewöhner's contribution to this development at DEKRA with the European Commercial Vehicle Safety Award.”

Commenting on the award, Oliver Deiters, Senior Vice President at DEKRA and Head of the Representative Office at the European Union, said, “Walter Niewöhner is a colleague who has been putting his heart and soul into road safety at DEKRA for decades. We are delighted that our partners EVU and DVR have nominated him for this year's award and congratulate him on this well-deserved recognition.”


For further information

DEKRA Konzernkommunikation
Wolfgang Sigloch

Tel. +49 711 7861-2386
FAx +49 711 7861-742386
wolfgang.sigloch@dekra.com


List of recipients to date:

1990     Professor Pal Strifler (Daimler), Hungary

1991     Professor Nikolaus Marx (University of Bremen), Germany

1992     Professor Ernst Göhring (Daimler), Germany

1993     Professor Klaus Langwieder (European Insurances Association), Germany

1994     Professor Egon-Christian von Glasner (Daimler), Germany

1995     Professor Gyula Köfalvi (Széchenyi István University), Györ, Hungary

1996     Siegfried Werber (DVR), Germany

1997     Professor Pál Michelberger (University of Budapest, President of FISITA), Hungary

1998     Eric Thoms (Scania), Sweden

1999     Toru Kajiyama (Isuzu), Japan

2000     Richard Hildebrandt (Allied Signal), USA

2001     Paul Oppenheimer MBE (Lucas-Girling), Great Britain

2002     Professor Jovan Todorovic (University of Belgrade), Serbia

2003     Bernard Tripier (Bosch), France

2004     Professor Sigmar Micke (Bosch), USA

2005     Friedrich-Wilhelm Matzner (Bendiberica), Spain

2006     Dr. Fujio Momiyama (Hino), Japan

2007     Dr. Jürgen Trost (Daimler), Germany

2008     Lennart Svenson (Volvo), Sweden

2009     Professor László Palkovics (Knorr), Hungary

2010     Professor Hartmut Marwitz (Daimler), Germany

2011     Hidehiko Enomoto (Hino), Japan

2012     Eberhard Hipp (MAN), Germany

2013     Christian Börner (BG Fahrzeuge), Germany

2014     Dr. Erwin Petersen (WABCO), Germany

2015     Professor Jörg Zürn (Daimler), Germany

2016     Dr. Christian Wiehen (WABCO), Germany

2017     Fredrich Claezon (Scania), Sweden

2018     Alexander Berg (DEKRA), Germany

2019     Dr. Stefan Guserle (MAN), Germany

2020     Kay Morschheuser (Daimler), Germany

2021     Joachim Werner (Iveco), Germany

2022     Walter Niewöhner (DEKRA), Germany