News
The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to back a document setting out the institution’s views on the EU road safety strategy for the next ten years. The Parliament’s report follows the publication of the European Commission’s ten year road safety plan published back in June 2019, and an outline of planned legislative measures announced in the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy published in December last year. MEPs have endorsed the overall EU strategy, with the headline targets to cut serious injuries and deaths by 50% by […]
A study of automated emergency braking systems (AEBS) on passenger cars by ETSC’s Austrian and Swiss members KFV and BFU, shows that significant improvements need to be made to performance in rain, fog, and poor light conditions. The organisations carried out more than 200 tests to better reflect the range of real world conditions such as rainy weather, fog and poor light conditions, and by varying the test dummies and speeds compared to tests carried out by Euro NCAP who award star ratings for […]
The UK government has announced changes to HGV driving tests that have been criticised by the national haulage industry association as a ‘risk to road safety’. The move is an attempt to speed-up recruitment of new lorry drivers in response to an ongoing shortage across Europe, but one that has been compounded in the UK because of Brexit. Under the new plans, drivers will no longer have to pass two separate tests to move from a non-articulated to an articulated lorry. The requirement for […]
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has begun a wide-ranging investigation of the safety of driver assistance systems prompted by several collisions involving cars that had driver assistance systems activated and emergency service vehicles. NHTSA initially sent a letter to Tesla last month requiring the company to provide extensive data on usage and operation of its so-called Autopilot system by 22 October. The agency has since widened the scope of its investigation and sent requests to 12 other car manufacturers requesting data about […]
The French capital has introduced Europe’s largest 30 km/h zone, covering the entire city for the first time with the exception of several main roads, such as the Champs Elysée and the main ring road. 30 km/h limits already covered two thirds of the city, but the zone has now been extended in a further bid to reduce collisions, noise and pollution. The southern city of Montpellier also introduced a city-wide 30 km/h limit on 1 August. The changes in France came as officials […]
The French government’s law to introduce periodic technical inspections for motorcycles from 2022 was announced and then abruptly withdrawn last month, following pressure from motorcycle owners’ groups. An EU law on roadworthiness, agreed back in 2013, gave Member States an exceptionally long lead time of nine years to put in place regular technical tests for motorcycles, with a deadline for 1 January 2022. At the time, ETSC was critical of the long delay and the decision to exclude small motorcycles (with engines smaller than […]
A new EU-funded research project, named ‘Panacea’, involving 16 partner organisations across Europe, will look at real time assessment methods for fitness to drive among professional drivers. The project will trial new technologies and systems with city bus drivers in Sweden, taxi drivers and courier riders in Greece and truck and coach drivers in Spain. The wide-ranging three-year project aims to develop a system that monitors fitness to drive before and during driving tasks and will develop cloud-based solutions for drivers, operators and enforcement […]
The European Court of Justice has said the way Latvia processes data on driver penalty points is not compatible with EU data privacy laws. Latvia maintains a list of drivers and their penalty points in a database and permits access to data on individual drivers without requiring justification. That goes against the provisions of the 2018 EU General Data Protection Regulation, according to a judgement by the European Court of Justice published on 22 June. The court pointed out that the improvement of road […]
A new approach for the development of road safety education courses and materials has been set out in a report produced by experts in eleven European countries and published today by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), the Flemish Foundation for Traffic Knowledge (VSV) and Fundación MAPFRE. The report is envisaged as a starting point for those who design, test, implement and evaluate educational activities on traffic safety and mobility, and are embarking upon the creation of new, or updating existing, activities. The new […]
Antonio Avenoso, Executive Director, ETSC Perhaps a social historian in a hundred years time, looking back over the last 18 months, will coin two new terms: BC, and AC; Before Covid and After Covid. It seems likely that the global pandemic that has altered the lives of so many the world over, will come to be seen as a turning point. In the realm of road safety, the decade until 2020 was marked in several European countries by slow progress, political neglect and inaction. […]
MEPs on the European Parliament’s transport committee have voted through a document setting out the institution’s views on the EU road safety strategy for the next ten years. The Parliament’s ‘own initiative follows the publication of the European Commission’s ten year road safety plan published back in June 2019, and an outline of planned legislative measures announced in the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy published in December last year. Overall strategy MEPs have endorsed the overall EU strategy, with the headline targets to cut serious injuries […]
Covid-19 pandemic travel decrease mainly responsible for a 17% drop in road deaths last year in the EU; Deaths dropped by 37% in the last ten years – short of the EU target to cut by 50% by 2020; Greece announced as the winner of the 2021 ETSC Road Safety Performance Index Award – with road deaths down by 54% in ten years; 2020 a “turning point” year – future reductions in road deaths in doubt without political leadership. Brussels – There were around […]
Collisions, derailments and deaths on Europe’s railways declined by around 6% a year between 1990 and 2019 according to updated analysis by Prof. Andrew Evans of Imperial College London published in Accident Analysis and Prevention. The paper also investigates the causes of accidents. A notable finding is that the proportion of accidents caused by signals passed at danger (SPADs) fell from 40 % in 1990− 1999 to 21 % in 2010− 2019. The author attributes the improvement to the increasing deployment of train protection […]
Fatigue among professional drivers is now the norm on European roads, according to a new study by the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF), the first EU-wide study in 15 years on driver fatigue in passenger and freight road transport. The report, based on a survey of around 3000 truck, bus and coach drivers found that: 60% of truck drivers and 66% of bus and coach drivers said they had to drive while fatigued on a regular basis; Nearly 800 drivers said they nearly crashed and caused […]
ETSC has welcomed endorsement by EU Member States of technical standards for Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA), paving the way for the technology to be installed on all new models of vehicle sold in the European Union from next year. ETSC is calling on vehicle manufacturers to go beyond the minimum requirements of the legislation to maximise the huge potential safety benefits of the technology. By next year, the European Union will have, by far, the most stringent vehicle safety standards in the world with […]
30 km/h is the default speed limit on single-lane urban roads in Spain since 11 May, the culmination of a policy announced in changes to the Spanish general road law as far back as 2014. In 2019, official figures showed that, for the first time, the proportion of vulnerable road users killed on Spanish roads exceeded those killed in vehicles. The push to finally implement the lower speed limits in urban areas was partly influenced by that data. Collisions between vehicles and pedestrians at […]
ETSC was sorry to hear of the passing of Max Mosley earlier this month. Mr Mosley was instrumental in getting Euro NCAP, the consumer vehicle safety testing organisation, off the ground in the late nineties and acted as its first President from 1997 until 2004. Euro NCAP Secretary General Michiel van Ratingen said “With his enormous influence, commanding personality and intellect, Max knew how to turn advocacy into action. He put vehicle safety front and centre in the automotive industry and today his legacy […]
UN Global Road Safety Week : Eight organisations call on European Parliament to take action on speed
Eight organisations are asking the European Parliament to take action on speeding as part of a new strategy on road safety for the next decade. The call has come during the sixth annual UN Global Safety Week which is focused on 30 km/h zones, which can improve the safety, in particular, of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. The European Parliament will vote on a new ten-year road safety programme on 16 June. A total of 18,800 EU citizens died on Europe’s […]
Speeding (29.3%), alcohol consumption (17.4%) and drink or drug use (10.2%) are the risk factors that most influence fatal motorcycle collisions in Spain, according to a new study by Fundación MAPFRE and the Spanish Roads Association. Not wearing a helmet of the right size, wearing it unbuckled or not wearing a helmet at all are other significant factors according to the report. The study “Roadmap for the improvement of road safety in motorbikes and mopeds”, launched earlier this month, looked at data from 240 […]
The French government has recruited Michelin-starred celebrity chef and host of the French version of ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ Philippe Etchebest to front a new drink-driving campaign as bar and restaurant terraces open again across France. The humorous social media campaign and television adverts feature Etchebest telling a diner off for heading to collect his motorcycle after drinking too much at a meal with friends. Find out more about the campaign at: https://www.securite-routiere.gouv.fr/actualites/quand-tient-quelquun-le-retient-1