Educate drivers and death toll will drop

Date: 09/06/05

The statistics on road safety could not be clearer. Any slight change in the three factors that affect road safety - driver behaviour, road infrastructure and new technology - can have huge effects on the number of people who die each year on EU roads.

In his report on the EU's Road Safety Action Programme, French-elected centre-right MEP Ari Vatanen, the legendary Finnish rally driver, highlights the fact that if everybody followed the traffic rules, road fatalities would be cut by more than 90%. If everybody wore a seat belt, complied with the legal speed limits and did not drink and drive, fatalities would be cut by more than 60%.

According to the UK's Transport Research Council, reducing speed by one mile an hour would lead to a 5% reduction in the number of accidents. And the European Commission estimates that its eCall initiative - under which a car involved in a collision automatically calls the emergency services - could save over 2,500 lives every year in the 25 member states.

Last October, EU transport ministers gathered in Verona and pledged to boost efforts to reach the four-year-old target of halving road accident fatalities by 2010. Their decision was later enshrined in conclusions at the EU's Transport Council meeting in December.

Their strategy included stepping up cross-border enforcement of traffic rules. According to non-governmental organisation The European Transport Safety Council, around a quarter of speed violations in France are committed by vehicles registered outside their country.

Ministers also agreed to boost support for the introduction of technological advancement, alluding to financial incentives for the safest cars.

But how much real action will be taken is yet to be seen.

The December conclusions were adopted without any exact timetable or programme agreed and it was hinted that the Italians - who at that time held the EU presidency - might have exaggerated ministers' political will.

And yet the fact remains that 50,000 people die on Europe's roads every year. In its review of the 2001 target, the Commission is expected to announce later this year that member states are so far behind schedule.

The addition of ten new member states with inferior roads and less mature safety rules has worsened the statistics, with the Baltic states showing a particularly poor record.

But even in those countries with good track records, safety is not progressing as much as it could. Vatanen suggests that the Commission design an EU

Road Safety Framework with performance indicators to "name, fame and shame" member states according to their progress.

At sea and in the air, there is also action at EU level. After the chaos caused when the Netherlands banned Turkish airline Onur Air from landing in its airports because of safety concerns, forcing Onur to divert to Belgium, the executive will try to garner support for a pan-EU approach to banning airlines.

And before the end of the year the Commission will adopt stricter rules governing the safety standards of ships in a third 'Erika package', named after the oil tanker that sank off the coast of France in 1999, polluting over 400 kilometres of the Brittany coast.

Article looks at EU action in the field of transport safety on the road, in the air and at sea.