Europe’s killer roads

The EU is missing its target to halve the number of road deaths, writes Jennifer Rankin.

Last year around 43,000 people were killed in road accidents. But these deaths attract far less comment than the few hundred deaths on Europe’s railways and the handful of deaths in plane accidents. Perhaps that is why the EU’s growing body of law on road safety gets so little attention.

In the early days, EU action on road safety developed at a glacial pace. Agreement on a law to harmonise safety standards on lorries was discussed and delayed for 20 years, finally making it into the EU’s rule book in 1984. Since then, the European Commission’s ambitions have grown. In 2001 the EU agreed a target to halve the number of fatalities on Europe’s roads by 2010, reducing the total number of deaths from 50,000 to 25,000. Last year, Jacques Barrot, the Commission vice-president and transport commissioner, said that the EU could still reach this goal, urging member states "to draw the necessary lessons" from a Commission study that shows the EU is off track.

But outside observers think it is improbable for the EU to meet this target. Ellen Townsend, head of policy at the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), thinks the EU set itself a target that was too ambitious. According to ETSC’s calculations, the ‘old’� member states (the EU15) would, based on their progress in 2001-06, reach the target by 2012. But worse road-safety records in the new member states mean that the EU25 will not hit the target until 2015. (ETSC’s projections do not include Romania and Bulgaria, the EU’s two newest member states.)

The 2010 target may be out of reach, but plenty of initiatives are under way. Last month Slovenia, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, promised that road safety would be a subject of "particular importance" for its six months at the EU’s top table.

Currently there are two proposals preoccupying EU legislators. At the end of this month (February 28) the Commission is to unveil a draft directive on cross-border enforcement of traffic laws, which will allow countries to prosecute errant drivers from other EU states. Problems with foreign drivers are big issues in some countries. In France, foreign cars account for 10% of traffic on the roads, but 25% of speeding cars. France has stitched together voluntary agreements with neighbouring countries to enforce penalties, but would prefer one system. The directive will put an EU-wide system in place, but the details of how it will work in practice are still being resolved.

The Commission has already published a proposal on road infrastructure safety management, which would make it compulsory for countries to have an accident inspection system to gather data on the causes of accidents. Later this month, the European Parliament’s transport committee will publish its report on the Commission’s proposal. Last June centre-right (EPP-ED) MEPs on the transport committee rejected the proposals, arguing that they were too bureaucratic. Observers think that there is a tough fight going on within the committee, which is likely to result in compromise that will allow member states more control over how they choose to conduct safety inspections and that will see the law restricted to the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T).

But campaigners argue that the Commission and member states could be doing more. At ETSC, Townsend says a priority for policymakers should be traffic-law enforcement to bring all countries in the EU into line with the star performers. Townsend would like to see more police on the roads and random alcohol tests in all EU countries (currently the UK, Ireland and Malta do not do random breath tests). "According to the research, what actually really changes people’s behaviour is not massive fines or even the threat of losing their licence, but the possibility of being caught," says Townsend.

The EU is missing its target to halve the number of road deaths, writes Jennifer Rankin.