Safe Speed Forums

Road Safety Directive has been adopted by the EP

The European Parliament has adopted the proposal for a “Directive on Road Infrastructure Safety Management” on June 19, 2008. Parliament declared that “in recent years, major advances have been made in vehicle design (safety measures and the development and application of new technologies) which have helped to reduce the number of people killed or injured in road accidents.” The EP stresses that action is now needed in other areas as well, such as making roads safer.

The adopted Directive offers Member States a toolkit of safety management procedures and direct the way to ensure that Europe overcomes today’s unacceptable patchwork of national standards resulting from decades of under-investment, which needlessly put lives at risk. Unfortunately, the annexes to the Directive have been made non-binding, leaving it up to Member States if and how they implement it. Nevertheless, the vote in Parliament is a major step forward because it recognises the importance of increasing road safety through an integrated approach. This includes vehicle technology, driver behaviour and infrastructure. Studies show that 27% of accidents in the EU are the result of a collision with unprotected objects on the side of the road.

Road safety is a priority for the European vehicle manufacturers and it is clear that technological improvements will continue to be made and developed. The European automobile industry has achieved a lot over the past decades to reduce fatalities and injuries on Europe’s roads through devices such as seatbelts, ABS and airbags. As a result fatalities have halved while traffic has trebled. The number of road casualties, however, still remains too high.

Vehicle manufacturers know from their research that the full potential of casualty reduction is only possible if an integrated approach is adopted that combines vehicle safety with efforts to improve infrastructure design and maintenance, and that addresses driver behaviour. So far, little has been done on road infrastructure safety, although infrastructure is not just merely the neutral context in which accidents happen.

Developing and maintaining infrastructure deserves the utmost effort by the European institutions and Member States. The European road safety targets set in 2001 (a 50% reduction in fatalities by 2010) might not be met unless road authorities rise up to the challenge of absorbing increasing road traffic, while offering safer driving conditions to all road users.