On 7 February 2024, the first working meeting of the Latin America Regional Assembly (LARA) safety working group was held by online.

During the meeting, Diego Di Siervi, Director of Railway Incident Investigation at Juanta de Seguridad del Transporte (JST) of Argentina, was approved as chair of the working group. Esther Mateo, Chair of the UIC Safety Platform and Director-General of Safety, Security, Processes, and Corporate Systems for the Spanish Infrastructure Manager ADIF, was also present at the meeting.

Next, the work topics agreed upon for 2024 were addressed, including railway staff training, and signals passed at danger (SPADs), which is also being dealt with by the UIC Safety Platform. The goal of these tasks is to harmonise and look for common criteria to enable certification and standardisation. As part of the meeting, the UIC Safety Unit also explained the process for recording accident data in the Safety Database, with the aim of have increased data input this year.

The working group will meet online on a monthly basis, until June 2024 at least, when a face-to-face meeting will be held in Buenos Aires. The group is working towards holding a webinar open to the entire railway community, especially for Latin America, on railway personnel training.