There has been a change in leadership at ServiceNet21. Safety21’s former Business Developer Manager, Paolo Tommasini, has succeeded Gianluca Longo, who will remain on the Board of Directors of the company founded in 2018 to provide Public Administrations with innovative road safety systems. The company also moved its operational headquarters to La Spezia last May.

With his appointment as CEO of ServiceNet21, Paolo Tommasini will head up the growth of the company, which operates in Liguria, Piedmont, Tuscany and Lombardy and was set up to strengthen the Group’s expansion in northern Italy by offering small and medium-sized Public Authorities the most advanced technologies and outsourcing services for improving road safety.

Commenting on his appointment, Tommasini said:

“I am proud to lead a company as strategic for the Group as ServiceNet21, a company that embodies not only the business model but also Safety21’s vision of the future of road safety in key regions such as Liguria, Piedmont, Tuscany and Lombardy, where, in just over a year, it has already developed important projects both in terms of installed tools and the digital transformation of safety from a smart city perspective, for example, by equipping local administrations with the TITAN cloud platform. At ServiceNet21, we will not fail to promote digital innovation in road safety as a development theme in the region, including through events that can generate reflection on the opportunities that technology now offers for the future of our cities.”

Born in 1968, with a Master’s degree in Business Administration, Paolo Tommasini has a background in professional sports, having taken part in numerous World Championships and the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Alongside his sporting career with the Fiamme Gialle group, he obtained an Honours Degree in Sport Management from Nottingham Trent University. On leaving the sports arena, he held a management position at a company involved in developing an innovative renewable energy project, before joining Safety21 in 2013 as Business Development Manager.

The growth of the Safety21 Group was showcased as a success story during the latest conference on the theme of business globalisation organised in Milan by AIFI, the Italian Association of Private Equity, Venture Capital and Private Debt, together with Intesa Sanpaolo.

The event, which was held behind closed doors on 24 October, hosted a reflection on the relationship between capital operations and increased globalisation of companies, based on the results of research conducted by LIUC-Cattaneo University studying 119 companies that completed an expansion or buy-out operation in Italy between 2006 and 2015.

In this context, the growth of Safety21 – from a promising scale-up to a globally-oriented Group, through the support of the Private Equity HAT – was presented by Isabella Lauro, Executive Director of Safety21, who highlighted the key steps along this path from the first participation of the HAT fund in 2016 to the significant projects that have been achieved thanks to it this year. These include the capital increase aimed at growth through acquisitions, and the acquisition, last June, of the company Multiservizi, whose established foreign market operations expand the Group’s business even further abroad, thus increasing its international reach in the search for new markets.

Safety21, together with Multiservizi, is also taking part in the 16th National Local Police Forum to be held on 14 and 15 November in Pescantina, in the province of Verona. Using a well-established format, the conference at Villa Quaranta will address current issues and topics of interest to local police authorities over its two days, with the participation of local and national authorities.

This event is an important opportunity for our Group, which also has a stand, to present its outsourcing services for complete management and collection of fines from foreign offenders and international debt collection, offered to local police authorities.

These are services that Safety21 brought in-house with the acquisition last spring of Multiservizi, a leader in the sector, and which allow Local Police and Public Authorities to manage the entire process of every single offence in a transparent way and in real-time through a single operator, optimising timescales and procedures.

The relationship with new technologies and insurtech is now fundamental for security operators facing a major technological and cultural evolution. An example of this change is the black box: a device that records speed, acceleration, driving style and all the data relating to what happened immediately before and after a road accident, reducing the cost of insurance and providing a number of benefits from the data it collects.

Installation will be mandatory from May 2022 for new cars, and from 2024 for older models. The aim is to identify more precisely who is responsible for accidents, not least by reconstructing what happened (speed, acceleration, impact), but there is a great deal of potential for using the data stored and disseminated by connected cars, enabling a variety of services, affecting several parties and changing not only road safety specifically but mobility in general.

What does the future hold? A future in which road safety data will increasingly be part of an integrated ecosystem. Infrastructure managers, for example, will be able to rely on up-to-date data collected in the field to understand the state of wear and tear on roads, and local and central government will be able to determine through concrete figures where and why new structures need to be built based on real requirements and traffic.

Within this new paradigm, we are certain that the involvement of the private sector, also in terms of opportunities for innovation, will be increasingly important.

Speeding is the main problem in road safety: it is a major factor in some 30% of fatal road accidents and significantly increases the risk of an accident.

Despite this, 40-50% of drivers on European roads exceed the recommended speed limit and 10-20% drive 10 km/h faster than the permitted limit. Confirmation of this trend is also provided at local and Italian level by the “Driving Style Observatory”, which in a recent survey of the behaviour of users of the A4 motorway (Brescia-Padua) found that on the section of road analysed, 16% of light vehicles and 85.5% of heavy vehicles exceeded the permitted speed limit on the motorway, and 2% of light vehicles and 1% of heavy vehicles exceeded the speed limit by more than 20 km/h.

This is a sample of the widespread behaviour, known to be ‘dangerous’ but completely underestimated in terms of the outcome. Incorrect and risky driving endangers your own life and that of others. Respecting the limits is an act of responsibility.

Recent European figures indicate that 70% of victims on urban roads are pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. It is therefore very important to map the technology available for improving road safety in order to give significant impetus to progress in the sector as well as the chance to reduce the ever-increasing accident figures, particularly those affecting more vulnerable road users.

Yet technology in itself may not always be the answer when faced with an emergency. Examples of positive innovation that are disconnected from road safety risks and behaviour patterns show that it is not always so.

One of these involves the silent running of electric and hybrid cars.

Paradoxically, this innovation has resulted in increased risks for pedestrians, who are not used to not being able to hear the noise of a car and are therefore more vulnerable to accidents.

This has led to corrective action by the EU that will “oblige” ‘green’ vehicles to make a minimum level of preventive noise.

Ultimately, road safety is always the result of a constant dialogue between innovation and cultural norms, meaning that as technology responds to its challenges, it always needs to strike a balance between forward-looking thinking and social behaviour.

Another milestone for Safe Pedestrian 2.0: our system for monitoring pedestrian crossings without traffic lights has now reached Santa Marinella.

In line with European legislation, which requires a significant reduction in the number of deaths and injuries caused by road accidents by 2020, the Region of Lazio has decided to undertake a series of initiatives aimed at making the area safer. These include the adoption of a ‘Safe Pedestrian 2.0’ system that was installed at the end of May on the Aurelia State Road (Km 60+800) at a pedestrian crossing that presents a potentially critical safety risk to more vulnerable road users.

The 360° camera allows Safe Pedestrian 2.0 to monitor pedestrians in real-time and retrieve video recordings that can be used to establish the circumstances and responsibilities in the event of an accident.

Following on from Porto San Giorgio, Labico, Arosio and Torno, Santa Marinella is now the fifth municipality in Italy to host Safety21’s high-tech pedestrian system, at a time when local authorities are becoming increasingly conscious of a problem whose numbers are tantamount to an emergency: in 2017, 600 pedestrians died in Italy and more than 20,000 were injured, most of them permanently. In the Santa Marinella municipality alone, ACI (Italian Automobile Club) statistics for 2017 show that there were 26 road accidents on the Aurelia road, leaving 44 people injured.

Safety21 S.p.A. announced that it had completed its acquisition of 100% of the share capital of the Multiservizi S.r.l. company. After an initial phase of internal growth, characterised by the success of the TITAN® proprietary cloud platform and by innovative infrastructure models for Public Authorities through Project Financing, Safety21 has embarked on a course of national and international acquisitions, aimed at bringing core elements of the Group’s chain of services in-house.

Multiservizi S.r.l., which also includes in its scope the operating branch of Tecnotraffico S.r.l., which it acquired in 2018, is based in Orvieto and is the leading Italian company in the outsourced management of foreign vehicle traffic penalties and the associated recovery of unpaid debts.

“We are very satisfied with the acquisition of Multiservizi, which represents a jewel in our crown in terms of process optimisation,” said Gianluca Longo, Safety21 Group founder and CEO. “And with over 30 years’ experience in the sector, it will contribute to our Group’s management and know-how for the development of specific vertical applications on our TITAN® IoT cloud platform, as well as a client portfolio of over 300 Italian local authorities, including the main metropolitan cities.”

Last May, Safety21 completed a capital increase of EUR 14 million, fully subscribed by the current shareholder, in addition to the EUR 6.5 million already subscribed in recent years. The increase was accompanied by a EUR 15 million senior loan obtained from a pool of banks including UBI Banca (lead bank) and Banco BPM. A pot of resources worth EUR 29 million entirely earmarked for the acquisition of target companies already identified in the relevant national and international markets, of which Multiservizi marks the first step.

Full press release in Italian and English

March 2015: “Ti Voglio Bene”, the integrated legality project for secondary school students developed by Safety21 in partnership with the Department of Psychology at “La Sapienza” University in Rome, arrived in Ascoli Piceno.

This was the first-ever use of the format, which aims to educate young people on correct driving behaviour and raise their awareness and sense of responsibility towards the risks involved in road traffic by means of high-impact training and communication campaigns.

Then it was Porto Ceresio’s turn, involving primary and secondary schools, and after that, Porto San Giorgio.

Today, four years after its official launch, Safety21’s “Ti Voglio Bene” project has featured at events and in both institutional and non-institutional contexts; strengthened by important new partnerships, most recently with Ducati, it bears steady witness to the Group’s ongoing social commitment to the next generation.

With the recent addition of the “red” two-wheeler brand, “Ti Voglio Bene” not only has a partner with worldwide appeal and the capacity to reach young people even more effectively via Ducati ambassadors in schools, but has also extended its target to an even younger audience, with special initiatives designed for children up to 6 years old.