News - Page 6
Ireland’s Road Safety Authority (RSA) wants the government to consider graduated fines for speeding motorists based on ability to pay. Moyagh Murdock, the RSA’s chief executive said last month that the agency plans to submit a proposal on graduated fines to the Department of Transport as part of a wider series of measures designed to combat drivers who repeatedly breach road traffic laws. Part of the reason for seeking higher fines for wealthier drivers was research carried out on behalf of the authority which […]
Grenoble in France is the first large French city to introduce a blanket 30km/h zone across the city – reduced from 50km/h. The measures, which came into force on 1 January, follow a large expansion of 30km/h zones in Paris and a similar scale change in Valencia in neighbouring Spain last year. Paris is expected to extend 30km/h zones across the city by 2020, and the Spanish government has also announced plans for 30km/h to be the default limit on urban roads. ETSC has […]
Romania’s president advised the country’s interior minister to resign earlier this week amid widespread public anger over the death of a police officer who was escorting the minister’s motorcade. According to a report by the Associated Press, President Klaus Iohannis told reporters he summoned for talks and advised him to resign. The government’s communication about the case had been “catastrophic”, he added. The 28 year-old policeman Bogdan Gigina died after riding his motorbike into a hole at road works on 20 October while in […]
Antonio Avenoso, Executive Director For years, speed has been recognised as one of the three main contributing factors to deaths on our roads. And for more than a decade, ETSC has been advocating the benefits of Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA), a driver assistance system that a 2014 Norwegian study found to be the ‘most effective’ in saving lives. We are optimistic that 2016 could prove to be a turning point in wide adoption of the technology. ISA uses a speed sign-recognition video camera and/or […]
A poll by YouGov has found that the majority of Germans would, for the first time, support a speed limit on those sections of German motorways that are currently unlimited – but only if it was set at 150 km/h, 20 km/h more than the current highest speed limit found in Europe. ETSC’s German member DVR has said that deaths are 25% higher on stretches of Germany motorways that have no speed limit compared to those with limits. 40 percent would support a limit […]
Cars fitted with fully-fledged Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) systems are starting to arrive in showrooms. The latest version of Ford’s S-Max and Galaxy, and Volvo’s XC90 can come factory-fitted with camera and GPS-based systems that alert the driver to the current speed limit and help prevent him or her from exceeding it. The systems can be activated and deactivated by the driver using steering wheel controls in a similar way to existing manual speed limiter and cruise control systems. Both vehicles have been awarded […]
France and Portugal are increasing the numbers of police speed enforcement cameras and Luxembourg has presented a bill to introduce the technology for the first time. France will add 500 fixed speed cameras over the next three years, taking the total to 4700, according to an announcement made by the Prime Minister Manuel Valls earlier this month. In addition, between 10,000 and 12,000 decoy units will also be installed – with the potential for cameras to be moved between units. The intention is to […]
30 km/h zones are continuing to spread across Europe with developments in recent months in Belgium, Spain and the UK – but implementation is sometimes hampered by bureaucracy. The Spanish city of Valencia introduced a 30 km/h zone across the entire historic centre district in September. The decision is designed to improve safety, reduce pollution, encourage shoppers to visit the area on foot and discourage transit traffic from crossing the city through the centre. The eventual aim is to limit all traffic to authorised […]
47 London buses covering two routes will be fitted with ISA technology as part of the second major trial of the system in the UK capital. More than 1,800 people have been killed or badly hurt by London buses over a five-year period. The move has been welcomed by pedestrian campaigners. Leon Daniels, Managing Director of Surface Transport at Transport for London, said: ‘Intelligent Speed Adaptation improves road safety by reducing incidences of speeding for all road users, allowing drivers to focus on looking […]
The French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has announced a two-year trial of a lower 80km/h limit on roads with no central separation, down from 90 km/h. The test will be conducted on three stretches of road, covering a total of 81km. The move was part of a package of measures announced in January in response to a rise in deaths on French roads of 4% last year. Victims groups have been calling for all 90km/h limit roads to be reduced to 80km/h, a measure […]
Drivers caught speeding in Luxembourg will face tougher penalties from 1 June when a revised driving license points system comes into force. Speeders will have four or six points deducted, up from two or four points today. For the first time, drivers caught using a phone or tablet while driving, tail gating or ignoring one way signs will also lose two points on their license. Drink and drug drivers will also see in an increase in the penalty from four to six points. Political […]
Provisional results from the first pan European 24-hour speed enforcement marathon have been released by TISPOL, the European Traffic Police Network. 18 out of 22 countries have now provided data. So far, a total of 122,581 speeding offences were detected over the 24 hour period covered. Of these, 116,479 offences were detected by police officers, with 6,102 detections using automatic devices. A total of 4,352,234 vehicles were checked during the exercise. The countries who have provided data so far are: Cyprus (350 offences); Germany […]
Rules for sharing information on traffic offences committed by drivers of foreign vehicles will apply to all EU countries from 2017. The extension of the existing rules to include the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark is the main change brought about by the new cross-border enforcement directive adopted by Transport ministers last month. The vote followed a preliminary deal reached with the European Parliament in December and a parliament plenary vote on 11 February. Member states must incorporate it into their national laws by […]
Germany’s Federal Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt has announced legal changes that will make it easier for local authorities to implement 30km/h zones. So far the limits have been restricted to residential areas, but the changes should make it easier for local authorities to set 30 km/h zones along main roads where schools and kindergartens are situated. Until now this has only been possible in the case where it has been proven that the site is high-risk. There has been pressure from state transport ministers, […]
Two separate studies of the impact of time-over-distance cameras (also known as ‘section control’) in Belgium and Scotland have shown considerable safety benefits. According to the Scottish data from a system installed on the busy A9 highway, excessive speeding – where drivers were tracked travelling at more than 10mph above the speed limit – has fallen by 97%. In Belgium an impact assessment by TM Leuven of a system installed on the E40 motorway found that collisions were reduced by some 15%. The researchers […]
A pilot project in the Belgian town of Zaventem has found that life-sized, two-dimensional dummies of police officers or police vehicles had a significant positive effect on cutting speeding, and also reduced average speeds. The experiment, run by local police, but assessed by ETSC’s member the Belgian Road Safety Institute (BIVV-IBSR), found that the number of speeding violations were cut in half during the time that a dummy had been placed at a high-risk site but went up again when the dummy was removed. […]
New safety technologies could play a major role in bringing the numbers killed on European motorways down, according to the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), authors of a new report published today. The new analysis of developments in motorway safety shows that, despite recent progress, around 1900 were killed on motorways in the EU in 2013. The report cites figures from several countries showing that up to 60% of those killed in motorway collisions were not wearing a seatbelt. The authors call on the […]
In a creative bid to cut urban speeding, the Belgian city of Antwerp has developed digital signs featuring happy and sad ‘selfies’ of city residents. Members of the public can upload two portrait photos to a special website, which are then used on warning signs. Drivers get a smiley face to say thank you for not speeding, or an angry face if they have exceeded the limit. See: BBC
The French government has announced more than twenty new road safety measures following the first national rise in road deaths in over a decade. The number of deaths on French roads rose by 3.7 percent – to a total of 3,388 people – in 2014, according to figures released by the Interior Ministry. Vulnerable road users were disproportionately affected with pedestrian deaths rising by 8 percent and cyclists by 7 percent. The measures announced include a plan to reduce the speed limit on some […]
A coalition of scientists, safety campaigners and environmental groups in Italy is calling for national and European action to introduce Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA). The group warns that Italy has a higher share of urban road deaths than the EU average and that half of those killed are pedestrians and cyclists. The appeal also says that the necessary technologies, notably GPS and electronic engine control have become so widespread as to make the barriers to introduction ‘obsolete’. Appeal website (website in Italian, appeal text […]