Killer roads targeted on EU Road Safety Day

Jörg Beckmann, executive director at the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), welcomed the EU initiative but said that what is important is not the day but what follows it. "Each and every stakeholder must do what it can in its own area and stop blaming others for the lack of progress," he told EurActiv. 

He added that it was a shame that the Commission had not chosen to mark the day by adopting some "crucial" piece of legislation, such as the directive on daytime running lights that is now being abandoned, despite the fact that it could save 2,000 lives annually. 

Chairman of the European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP)  John Dawson lamented the fact that there are still "hundreds of stretches of road across Europe where death and serious injury is routine but avoidable with changes to road design and layout". He told EurActiv: "Making roads safer through simple and affordable road-infrastructure improvements, such as making road markings clearer, modernising junctions or installing safety fencing, provides some of the highest returns in terms of lives and money saved anywhere in the European economy." 

Steffen Rasmussen, head of road safety at Eurocities, said that while governments are urging more people to walk and cycle, to reduce congestion and pollution, many are still not providing safe conditions for pedestrian and cyclists, which represent an ever-increasing share of those killed or seriously injured in traffic. He said that the EU should encourage the development of road safety plans in all European cities, at the level of public administration – via a Directive – and at the level of companies – via funding schemes. 

The Motorcycle Industry Association (ACEM)  and the Federation of European Motorcyclists’ Association (FEMA) said a change of perception about motorbikes was needed. “All too often, motorcyclists are forgotten as a vulnerable user. All too often, they are regarded as a danger or as high-risk-takers. But accidents are most often caused by cars that have not seen them,” said FEMA’s Virginie Peters. An ACEM member agreed that motorcyclists were too often completely left out of the equation when building infrastructure. 

Jean-Paul Repussard of the Commission's road safety unit said that the Commission's future Green Paper on Urban Transport (due this autumn) would also cover road safety in cities, with a particular focus on two-wheelers, "which can also present a much-needed solution for congestion". 

On the daytime running lights, he commented: "Try getting a proposal that would increase the emissions of CO2 through at the moment," referring to the current EU focus on limiting vehicles' contribution to climate change (see LinksDossier on Cars & CO2). 

International Road Union (IRU)  pointed out that human error was the cause of 85.2% of accidents involving heavy goods vehicles in Europe and that better training of drivers is therefore key to increasing road safety. In particular, revising driving school programmes to train other road users – responsible for three quarters of these accidents – better to understand truck manoeuvres, must be a priority for governments, said Bertil Dahlin, president of the IRU's goods transport liaison committee, which criticised the fact that cost-effectiveness was rarely taken into account when imposing legal measures on trucks. 

Dr Bernhard Ensink, secretary-general of the European Cyclists' Federation, noted that while much work had been done to increase the safety of car passengers, little had been acheived to improve the safety of cars for pedestrians and cyclists in cases of collision. He urged car manufacturers to get to work on developing outer airbags, especially on large cars, such as SUVs, which are "significantly more dangerous" for other road users. 

Kazuhiko Miyadera, executive vice-president of Toyota Motor Europe’s R&D Group, said: "No matter how much vehicle-safety technology improves, the safety awareness of people and the traffic environment will always remain key factors in enhancing road safety." He therefore supported an integrated approach, "from parking infrastructure to rescue operations after accidents". 

Nevertheless, he believes that developing safe vehicles, both by working on car bodies and, especially, by integrating intelligent driver-assistance technologies that can help to avert collisions, offers serious advantages, both in terms of safety and for the environment: "By creating a society where there are no collisions, a 'zero-accident society', we can reduce the weight of cars and decrease levels of CO2 emissions," he said.