Carlos Roberto Guemez Shedden

From Costa Rica to Bahrain: applying engineering to road safety processes

I'm a mechanical engineer working in road safety for over 14 years. 

I started my career in road safety at Costa Rica's Road Safety Council (Cosevi), where I worked for 10 years researching mechanical engineering applied to road safety. 

The research projects I conducted at Cosevi were focused on deepening our understanding of vehicle dynamics and use of infrastructure and biomechanics of injuries to improve risk factor controls, such as speeding, infrastructure characteristics, and technical vehicle features, to improve Costa Rica's regulations, infrastructure construction and enforcement practices. 

During my time at Cosevi, I also studied transport engineering at the master’s level at Canada’s University of Manitoba.

I then moved to the Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO), where I gained experience managing the road safety process in corporations which included the four components of the safe system approach: speed, infrastructure, human factors, and vehicles. 

After working at BAPCO, I accepted the challenge of becoming the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR’s) Senior Road Safety Coordinator. I’ve since been leading it global road safety process, which has also allowed me to gain experience working in Africa.

I also recently started a master’s degree in Transport Engineering at the University of Hasselt, Belgium. 

Working and studying around the world, from the Americas to the Middle East and Africa, has allowed me to manage road safety processes on both the public and private side in countries with different cultures.

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