Road Safety Enforcement in the EU Vision 2020

This paper shortly outlines what action the EU and the Member States need to take to achieve a high level of enforcement of traffic law to save lives across the EU by 2020.

The European Commission adopted a new target to halve road deaths by 2020 and, in its Transport White Paper in 2011, a ‘Vision Zero’ for 2050. In order to achieve the 2020 target the EU will have to go above and beyond current reduction trends. Enforcement is a means to prevent collisions from happening by way of persuading drivers to comply with the safety rules. Deterrence is based on giving drivers the feeling that they run too high a risk of being caught when breaking the rules.

This paper, originally published in 2013, was updated in March 2015 to reflect the coming-into-force of the revised EU rules on cross-border enforcement of traffic offences.