Juhani Jaaskelainen, Head of Unit ICT for Transport, European Commission speaks at the 2010 eSafety Challenge. The European Commission is keen to promote eSafety.
The European Commission has launched a new EU Road Safety programme which will aim to cut the number of road deaths by half from 2011-2020. The programme sets out a range of EU wide initiatives focusing on vehicle safety, the safety of road infrastructure and user behaviour.
The Commission has set seven strategic objectives for the next decade. They are: improved safety measures for trucks and cars; building safer roads; developing intelligent vehicles; strengthening licensing and training; better road safety enforcement; targeting injuries; and a new focus on motorcyclists.
The bid to improve vehicle safety is consistent with the eSafetyAware! Campaign’s activities to raise awareness and installation rates of key anti-collision technologies. eSafetyAware! itself is supported by the European Commission together with the FIA Foundation.
Under the new EU plans, there will be an emphasis on “active safety” devices which include eSafety technologies in particular. eSafety devices will include lane departure warning systems, mandatory automatic emergency braking for trucks and buses and mandatory speed limiters for commercial vehicles. The Commission will also look at further measures to increase the level of implementation in private passenger vehicles of other eSafety technologies such as anti-collision warning systems.
In line with the principles developed by the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP), which is also supported by the FIA Foundation, the Commission will look at improving the safety design of road infrastructure. The EU will look at extending EU legislation on infrastructure safety management to rural roads. Current legislation requires safety audits for infrastructure, identification of black spots and inspections. It is anticipated that extending these principles to rural roads could be done on the basis of exchange of best practice by EU Member States.
European Commission Vice-President responsible for Transport Siim Kallas, said: "A hundred people die everyday on Europe's roads. We have made good progress since 2001 and we have succeeded in saving nearly 80,000 lives. But the number of fatalities and injuries on our roads is still unacceptable. We are looking at what kind of cars motorists drive, where they drive and how they drive and we want to cut road deaths in half by 2020."
FIA Foundation Director General David Ward said: “The EU is quite rightly looking at all aspects of road safety - developing the latest anti-collision technology, designing safer roads, improved enforcement, public education, emergency response and better data collection. Over the next decade Europe can take road safety a further step forward. Indeed, with these plans in place we hope to see Europe playing a leading role in the forthcoming global UN Decade of Action for Road Safety.”
The EU’s previous target, set in 2001, was to halve the number of fatalities across Europe by 2010. This target has not been met – as of 2009 road fatalities had been reduced by 36%. The leading EU Member States are the UK with 38 fatalities per one million population and Sweden and the Netherlands both with 39 fatalities per one million.
Overall, the average level of road deaths per one million inhabitants has been brought down from 113 in 2001 to 69 in 2009 for all current 27 Member States. This is close to the level of the best-performing Member States – the UK, Netherlands and Sweden - in 2001.
See the European Commisson Road Safety website for more details >
See the eSafety Aware website for more details >
See the iRAP website for more details >