Children
Children across Europe missed out on road safety lessons and tests for cycling and walking safely amid Covid-19 lockdowns and school closures, according to a new report by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), the Flemish Foundation for Traffic Knowledge (VSV) and Fundación MAPFRE. However, several education experts consulted for the report found that lockdown boosted innovation in delivery methods, tools and working practices which could lead to improved outcomes in the future. The report has been published to coincide with the third UNESCO […]
In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, most European governments put in place unprecedented restrictions on travel and movement, including lockdowns affecting most of the population and the closure of kindergartens and schools. For this LEARN! Flash report ETSC asked the members of the LEARN! Expert Panel how the restrictions, and in particularly the closure of schools, affected the provision of traffic safety and mobility education in their country, their work related to it, and how they adapted to it. ETSC also […]
Online event Tuesday 23 June 2020, 11:00-12:30 CEST The LEARN! Key Principles are 17 recommendations that should be implemented in all European countries, in order to ensure that everyone – and especially children and youngsters – receive high quality traffic safety and mobility education. This webinar presented these Key Principles, and showed how they can be applied in practice through examples from Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands and Norway. Click here to download the agenda and click here to watch the recording of the webinar. […]
A review by the Dutch Safety Board of the procedures that led to approval of the Stint electric child cart for use on Dutch roads, says that “safety was made subordinate to the desire for innovation in road transport.” Four children died when the electrically-assisted cart that they were travelling in collided with a train at a railway crossing in September last year. The exact causes of the collision have not been published so far, but independent investigations carried out both before and after […]
KFV, ETSC’s Austrian member, is calling for the doubling of penalties for traffic offences where children are involved and a default 30 km/h speed limit in cities as part of a range of recommendations to better protect children. Eight children (up to the age of 14) die on Austrian roads every year, on average, while around 300 are seriously injured, according to KFV analysis of data from 2013 to 2017. The number of collisions involving children has not decreased for five years.
There are vast differences in the amount of road safety education given to children across Europe, particularly at secondary school level, according to a new report. The research shows that while road safety education is provided to children in primary education all over Europe, it is not given to youngsters in secondary education in a fifth of the 36 European states and regions studied. Moreover, the research reveals that traffic safety and mobility education is only sparsely addressed in secondary education in most of […]
The third phase of new UN regulations covering the safety of child car seats has been agreed and will come into force next year. The new additions to the R129 standard cover baby and toddler seats held in position by a seatbelt, i.e. not attached to Isofix mounting points found on newer cars. Child seats built to this new standard would be a safer option for parents with older cars without Isofix points. Phase 1 of the R129 standard, which has been in place […]
2016 was the third consecutive poor year for road safety: 25,670 people lost their lives on EU roads compared to 26,200 the previous year – a 2% decrease. But this followed a 1% increase in 2015 and stagnation in 2014. In addition, around 135,000 people were seriously injured on European roads in 2014 according to European Commission estimates based on the MAIS 3+ standard definition of a serious injury. Road collisions give rise to huge costs to society. A recent study estimated the value […]
The Belgian city of Antwerp has announced a trial of restrictions on heavy goods vehicles in two areas during the early morning and afternoon on school days. Lorries will be prohibited from circulating between 7.30 and 9.00 and between 15.00 and 17.00 when children are travelling to and from school. The Flemish pedestrians organisation Voetgangers Beweging has welcomed the announcement, describing the measure as a ‘Christmas gift to the children of Antwerp’ and called for expansion of the scheme across Flanders.
The Belgian consumer organisation Test-Achats/Test-Aankoop has called for tougher safety standards for children’s cycle helmets after it found large differences in the ability of current models to protect against brain injury. The organisation commissioned the University of Strasbourg to test twelve child cycle helmets using a digital model of the human head to simulate the protection offered. Price offered no indication of performance, as an €80 model was outperformed by one selling for €10. The best model tested carried a 30% risk of brain […]
Association Prévention Routière, ETSC’s French member organisation, has published a list of road safety priorities for the Presidential election candidates. The proposals include a ban on use of mobile phones while driving by all company employees and a target of zero children killed on French roads. Some major corporations have already banned their employees from using mobile phone (including hands free kits) at the wheel, including Unilever, the multinational consumer goods company. The manifesto was sent to all presidential candidates. Eight out of eleven […]
Children under twelve are now required to wear a cycle helmet in France under legal changes that came into force on 22 March. Spain began requiring helmets for under-16s in 2014, and a number of other EU member states have had bicycle helmet laws for youngsters for several years including Sweden, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. In Malta, all riders are required to wear a helmet.
A new mobile phone game launched by the Automobile Club of Romania is encouraging kids to tell their parents when they exceed the limit. Plimbă Ursul (Bear Driver) features a bus driven by a bear, collecting friendly animals from bus stops along his route. Using GPS data, the game tracks the speed of the vehicle the child is travelling in, and warns if it is going too fast. The child can then let the driver know – and if they don’t slow down, the […]
ETSC is pleased to support the third annual UN Global Road Safety Week which runs from 4-10 May. This year’s events and actions are all about highlighting the plight of children on the world’s roads and generating action to better ensure their safety. How safe are European roads for children? Last year ETSC published new research into children killed in cars in the EU showing that, in 2012, at least 319 child car occupants aged 0 to 14 were killed. Our soon-to-be published report […]
Around 240,000 car occupants were killed in road collisions in the EU in the years 2001-2012. There were 12,345 deaths in 2012 compared with 27,700 in 2001 (1), a cut of 55%. Deaths of car occupants were cut by more than the overall death rate (49%) and substantially more than the rate for other road users (41%). Car occupants have therefore benefitted more than other road users from road safety measures adopted over the past decade. This is not surprising, as many of those […]
Seat-belt reminder alerts in all car seats could save 900 lives a year Spain and Latvia make biggest progress in cutting car deaths Transport safety campaigners are calling on the European Union to accelerate progress on reducing the number of people killed in cars every year in the EU, as new research shows 12,345 car occupants were fatally injured in 2012. The report into trends in car occupant safety, published today by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), found that 900 lives could be […]
This 3rd PIN Report provides an overview of European countries’ performance in four areas of road safety. It builds on the 1st and 2nd Road Safety PIN Reports published in June 2007 and 2008 respectively. It shows how countries have progressed in reducing road deaths between 2001 and 2008 and how they perform in protecting a particular vulnerable group: children. It also gives an overview of the striking disparities in the market penetration of safe cars and outlines the role of European capitals as […]