Steering Toward Road Safety

[ASIRT]

Risk Management Network, RMN, hosted a road safety panel, “Steering Toward Road Safety: Navigating the Road Ahead” earlier this fall. Hiram Jobes, Vice President of Operations, and his colleagues from Concilium opened the morning session by describing the 2024 bus crash in Tanzania when dozens of Youth With A Mission, YWAM, volunteers, students, and their leaders were injured and killed. The Concilium team outlined the difficult and emotional work they performed with locals, families, and governments to locate the victims who had been transported to various medical facilities and then repatriate the remains.

Following the presentation, ASIRT Founder and President Rochelle Sobel offered her family’s perspective of the 1995 crash that claimed the lives of her 25-year old son Aron and 22 other bus passengers in Turkey. She provided the audience of almost 90 participants from faith-based organizations with current statistics and details about road travel throughout the world.

Gayle Nadler, also of ASIRT, presented the origins of the organization. She highlighted its resources for travelers, including the safety and security professionals in attendance on behalf of their volunteers and missionaries, about how to prepare for navigating routes in unfamiliar regions. Jay Kuczynski, Manager, Global Safety & Security, Office of International Mission, The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, shared how he uses ASIRT Road Safety Reviews to assess data and inform decision makers and travelers within the Church to develop and maintain procedures and policies for mitigating crashes and keeping travelers safe.

Dave Diepenbrock, Director of Security, Ethnos360, led the audience in a breakout session to discuss road safety situations and priorities and explore solutions to manage road travel risk. He followed up with a robust question and answer segment, and provided road safety resources for participants to use when incorporating road safety into their travel assessments and planning.

The panel was held on September 8, 2025, in Convoy of Hope’s headquarters in Springfield, Missouri. It was one of the first sessions of a three-day conference organized in part by Scott Brawner, Concilium President and Executive Director, Risk Management Network.