Safely on the water with SafeTrx

The Hague, 15 April 2022

Thousands of surfers and kiters will be on the water again this summer. They often consider themselves to be well prepared, but experience has shown that this is not the case.

Today, we joined the national press at an event organised by SafeTrx and KNRM to draw attention to the personal safety of board sporters. SafeTRX has developed a watch with tracker which a surfer in distress can use to alert the coastguard. The location is given to an accuracy of 1 metre, which facilitates the search. Today, however, we saw for ourselves how difficult it can be to find a surfer in distress at sea. And today the weather was glorious with not too much wind.

Niels van Campen, now spokesperson of SafeTrx, nearly drowned once himself. After getting into trouble surfing and only being rescued by another surfer after an hour, he went looking for something that would make it easier to locate and rescue someone.

SafeTrx was further developed in the Netherlands with support from ‘Field Lab in the North Sea’, in which Campus@Sea, initiative of the Municipality of The Hague, is also involved.