EU action needed to lower death toll on Europe’s roads

Date: 18/07/1996

A NEW Commission proposal, if implemented, will reduce the European Parliament's participation and ability to scrutinise vehicle safety standards against the treaty obligation to provide a high level of protection. It would transfer standard-making powers to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN ECE) in Geneva, which is a forum for reducing trade barriers.

The loss of 48,000 lives, over 1.5 million personal injuries and damage to property caused by road accidents last year is valued at 165 billion ecu, more than twice the total EU budget.

This costs more than congestion or environmental effects, and causes greater productivity losses than lung cancer.

The risk of road death in the Union is much higher than in the United States, Japan or Australia.

Yet, compared with attention given to the environmental and economic elements of road transport policy, EU action to date to reduce casualties has barely scratched the surface of this largely avoidable problem which results in so much premature and irrecoverable personal loss.

As the Parliament recognises, a Union strategic road safety plan with numerical targets is needed to provide a focus for effective activity and resource allocation.

All the powers exist to allow such action to be taken within the scope of the subsidiarity principle. In 1993, the Maastricht Treaty formally set out the EU's shared responsibility for road safety with member states. While some have been less than eager to embark on shared action, the weight of argument in favour must surely overcome resistance sooner or later.

The exclusive Union competence for vehicle standards, however, is an undisputed area for action. Moreover, realistic crash protection standards could reduce car crash casualties in the EU by 20&percent;.

With over 500 car occupant deaths a week, and a sevenfold difference in fatal accident rates between the best and worst performing countries, harmonised car safety standards provide an important opportunity for the Union to save lives.

European vehicle standard harmonisation involves interaction with UN ECE and the wider international community.

Safety standards for EU-registered passenger cars have been governed exclusively by the system of European whole vehicle type approval since January 1996. Individual directives are typically based on UN ECE voluntary regulations.

Since harmonisation began in the 1970s, the legislative emphasis has been predominantly on reducing trade barriers, although single market legislation in 1987 required proposals concerning health, safety and environmental protection to take as a base a high level of protection (Article 100a).

Since this has yet to take major effect, much vehicle safety legislation is based on the state of knowledge of some 20 to 30 years ago.

However, last year, two important new draft directives were introduced to improve car crash protection in frontal and side impacts.

Following MEPs' intervention, the Commission's proposals originating from the Directorate-General for Industry (DGIII), and based on UN ECE standards, were upgraded substantially to reflect best practice safety design.

The importance of the Parliament's involvement was in winning amendments to the original proposals which - had they remained unchanged - would have resulted in negligible improvements in car design.

The amended proposals now require significant changes with the potential to reduce the 90,000 deaths and serious injuries which occur annually across the EU.

Both Commission frontal and side impact proposals comprised two-stage tests. In each case, the stage one test was based on a weak UN ECE regulation considered by experts, internationally, to be unrealistic and of limited value. The stage two tests (not covered in the UN ECE regulation), however, were considered to be representative of real accident conditions with substantial crash protection potential.

In response, MEPs deleted the stage one tests and voted in amendments to ensure that the introduction of the important stage two tests would not require further changes to the directive.

Only after the Parliament's active participation, made possible by the co-decision powers it received in 1993, did EU decision-making on new vehicle directives take full account of treaty requirements and prove that harmonisation to the highest practicable level of protection is possible at minimal cost.

So it was astonishing to see the two contradictory policy statements in DGIII's report to the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles conference in Melbourne in May.

On the one hand the Commission advocates the Union type approval system as the 'ideal basis for the whole of the EC for stringent requirements relating to the construction of vehicles, vehicle systems and components which affect safety and environmental protection'.

On the other, the Commission proposal before the Council and the Parliament for the accession of the EU to the UN ECE 1958 agreement on uniform technical requirements for motor vehicle equipment and parts is advocated 'in the interest of world-wide harmonised regulations and free global trade unimpeded by technical obstacles'.

The agreement has the removal of barriers to trade as its main objective in standard-making, with no commitment to achieving a high level of protection.

In its current form, the 1958 agreement is not global and is in the process of revision. It is presently unacceptable to countries such as the US, which has tabled an amendment, because of its lack of commitment to safety or transparency in the decision-making process and voting procedures.

If the EU accedes to the agreement, type approval standards for EU cars would be agreed in the UN ECE. While the Parliament would be involved in the decision-making process, its recently acquired co-decision powers which have been used to such good effect would be replaced by a general assent procedure taking away current powers to amend and improve.

One reason why UN ECE standards often fail to produce a high level of protection is because of the coordinated position adopted in advance by member states who are in the majority in this forum. This Article 113 position is agreed by majority voting, often with a blocking minority from the car-producing countries leading to a lowest common denominator approach. This is what lay behind the original front and side impact proposals.

With the politics so often resting in the technicalities of standards, full parliamentary scrutiny with power of amendment is the only way to ensure that safety as well as commercial interests are served.

A further example of the need for parliamentary scrutiny of the decision-making process for car safety standards in the EU is the direction of the current debate on car design to reduce pedestrian injury.

The introduction of new test procedures to make car fronts more 'pedestrian friendly' is a priority of the Commission's work programme. Forget bull bars, currently a minor problem. It is the fronts of ordinary cars which kill and injure more young children and older pedestrians in a crash.

The Commission has reported that test procedures which would allow a proposal to be made by the end of 1996 are virtually complete. These crash test procedures, developed by the European Experimental Vehicles Committee (EEVC), are the fruit of international cooperation between national research laboratories, governments and industry over the last decade.

However, in view of large differences between two favourable cost benefit analyses from impartial national research laboratories in the UK and the Netherlands, and an unfavourable cost benefit analysis from the car industry, DGIII's current answer is to commission a further cost benefit analysis which would delay the proposal by another year.

Apart from undermining the contribution of independent research from several member states (a study by the German Federal Highway Research Institute also highlights the benefits), every year that the Commission delays introducing a proposal means 750 unnecessary pedestrian and cyclist deaths, and over 18,000 severe injuries in car accidents - the annual casualty reduction potential of this important safety measure.

The EU has a vital role to play in road casualty reduction, especially in the field of crash protection standards. Dilute the Parliament's role in this activity and the scope for cutting the most important societal cost of road transport remains less certain.

Jeanne Breen is executive director of the European Transport Safety Council.