The annual American Congress was hosted by Mexico’s National Motor Sport Association (OMDAI), headed by José Abed.

In his opening speech, FIA President Jean Todt, who was recently appointed as Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General for Road Safety, reaffirmed the importance of combining efforts to make roads safer: “Every day people die from accidents on the streets and it's something we need to combat. Gradually, we are creating strong leadership towards an ambitious global road safety project – this is a great opportunity and it is a privilege to share the progress we have achieved recently.”

A message Carlos Slim Domit, Executive President of the Mexican Automobile Association (AMA) and avid supporter of road safety initiatives, also conveyed: “The realization that almost all meetings were focused on the issue of road safety gives us a great amount of motivation, but also a major challenge to work on. Whenever we see that accident rates have declined thanks to programmes in which we are involved, we are excited, because this is a reflection of life, not of economic indicators, and there is nothing more important than that.”

This year’s Congress saw presentations by Andrew McKellar, FIA Secretary General for Automobile Mobility and Tourism; Felipe Rodríguez, Executive Director of the ANSV (Mexican National Road Safety Agency) and Chairman of the OISEVI (Ibero-American Road Safety Observatory); Fernando Gutiérrez, Secretary General for the FIA Americas and NACAM FIA Director as well as other experts from organisations such as Safe Kids Worldwide, the FIA Foundation, the National Council for the Prevention of Accidents (CONAPRA), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Among the topics covered during these two days were the road safety efforts made in Mexico and Latin America, and the strengthening of synergies between Sport and Mobility.

As well as presenting the main development tiers in the area of Mobility which are connectivity, technology, automation and sustainability, Mr McKellar spoke about the FIA’s initiative to create a high-level panel focusing on road safety, bringing together international business, institutional and NGO leaders for the very first time: “It is one of Jean Todt’s priorities to make the FIA a leading institution in this area” he said “we want to support FIA members in the implementation of road safety legislation and increase resources in these programmes.”

In his closing speech, FIA President Jean Todt announced that the American Congress XVIII would be held in Paraguay in 2016.