Infrastructure safety
Minimum road infrastructure safety standards will be extended to national roads across the EU in a significant boost for road safety, following a provisional deal on new legislation agreed today. Existing EU rules require governments to carry out regular road safety audits, identify high-risk sites and prioritise safety when building new roads but the legislation currently applies only to major European roads known collectively as the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). A revised version of the rules agreed today would extend these measures to all […]
Palace of the Parliament, Izvor Street 2-4, Bucharest, 20-21 March 2019, The Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Ministry of Transport of Romania and the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) organised the International Road Safety Conference in Bucharest on 20-21 March. The two-day event gathered representatives of the European Commission, international experts, national authorities, private business environment, NGOs from Romania and abroad. The conference provided the participants a framework for the exchange of good practice and experiences to promote and […]
Antonio Avenoso Executive Director, European Transport Safety Council Road collisions, especially those without death or serious injury, rarely make for global news headlines. Except of course when a member of the British royal family is involved. Commentators have been quick to place the blame for last week’s collision involving the Duke of Edinburgh’s SUV and a Kia Carens MPV. The culprits include an elderly driver, speed limits that were too high and glare caused by the sun. An in-depth crash investigation by a professional […]
New EU rules covering road infrastructure safety and minimum vehicle safety standards moved a step closer today, following approval by a key committee of MEPs in the European Parliament. The European Transport Safety Council welcomed the progress and is calling for the EU to reach a final deal on both pieces of legislation as soon as possible. The European Parliament’s Transport committee voted to approve an update to rules governing road infrastructure safety management. The existing requirements ensure governments carry out regular road safety […]
Industry and transport ministers from the 28 EU Member States have set out their official responses to three key pieces of road safety legislation. ETSC welcomed the position of the Council of the EU on new vehicle safety measures but is worried that new rules on road infrastructure safety management and revised professional driver working hour regulations will be weakened unless the European Parliament argues successfully for a stronger position in upcoming negotiations. ETSC warmly welcomed the endorsement by EU ministers of industry of a new […]
ETSC is warning that a weakened version of new EU road infrastructure safety rules, set to be agreed by national ministers of transport on Monday, will do little to improve road safety. ETSC is calling for MEPs in the European Parliament to demand more wide-ranging and effective rules when negotiations begin on the final legislation early next year. In a text set to be approved at the Transport Council meeting in Brussels, EU Member States have introduced weaker language on three key elements of […]
A coalition of safety groups, traffic police, cyclists, transport workers and the road sector are calling on the European Parliament to back a proposal to extend the scope of EU road infrastructure safety rules to cover all primary roads in Europe, and to incorporate the needs of cyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists in the implementation of the rules. More than 25,000 people died on EU roads in 2017, the equivalent of two passenger planes crashing every week, killing everyone on board. The existing rules, which […]
Introduction Improving infrastructure is a cornerstone of road safety and will be critical to achieving the EU’s new road safety targets for 2030 and implementing a Safe System approach across the road network. The road system should be safe for use by every road user in every EU member state. We, the undersigned, welcome the current revision of the Road Infrastructure Safety Management Directive 2008/96 (RISM) and call for the inclusion of the following recommendations. Extension of the scope of Road Infrastructure Safety Management […]
Four pairs of engineering students from Italy, Lithuania and Poland have been recognised for projects to redesign and upgrade high-risk road infrastructure in the cities of Milan, Naples, Vilnius and Kraków. The students’ projects were delivered as part of YEARS (Young Europeans Acting for Road Safety), a Europe-wide project on the road safety of young people managed by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) and the UK’s Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) with the support of the European Commission, the German Road […]
On 17 May 2018, the European Commission published a proposal to revise EU infrastructure safety rules. In this paper, ETSC presents recommendations for the revision of the road infrastructure safety management (RISM) Directive 2008/96 and Tunnel Safety Directive 2004/54.
On 17 May 2018, the European Commission published a large package of transport policy proposals known as the ‘Third Mobility Package’ including some very significant measures to improve road safety in the European Union. 25,300 people died on EU roads in 2017, a figure that has hardly budged in four years. The road safety package should help substantially reduce this figure if combined with efforts at national and local level. The main elements include: Safer cars, vans, lorries and buses The EU has the […]
European Commission announces major package of road safety measures including new targets to cut road deaths and serious injuries in half by 2030; World’s most advanced new car safety standards will make life-saving technologies such as Automated Emergency Braking and overridable Intelligent Speed Assistance a standard feature on all new vehicles; currently these features are only available as an option on some models; Race on for proposals to be approved by 28 EU Member States and the European Parliament. Veuillez trouver ci-dessous la version […]
The Brussels Capital region will introduce mandatory first aid training for all new drivers from November this year. 20,000 places on courses organised by the Red Cross will be available on an annual basis. But the requirements only apply in Brussels, one of the three main administrative regions of Belgium. The costs of the courses will be paid, not by drivers, but by the Brussels authorities. ETSC says first aid training could be useful, and in any case, can prove helpful in a wide […]
The European Commission will announce a major package of road safety legislation next month including new vehicle safety standards, revised rules on infrastructure safety management, a strategy on automated driving as well as a new overarching road safety framework setting targets for the decade to 2030. The announcements, expected on 16 May, are being published after lengthy delays and several years of slow to non-existent progress on reducing road deaths and serious injuries in the EU. Figures published earlier this month showed that deaths […]
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 European Commission’s working group on Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (the C-ITS platform) has published its Phase II Final Report, which includes a number of recommendations for prioritising road safety. C-ITS encompasses sharing of data from transport infrastructure to vehicles, and from vehicle to vehicle. The technology can support drivers but will also develop as a complement to automated and autonomous vehicles. The platform’s road safety working group, of which ETSC was a participant, set out a list of priority C-ITS services with higher […]
Joint safety operations involving tunnel and open road safety experts are possible, useful and their costs could be low if well planned, according to the final report of ECOROADS, a pan-European project looking at possible synergies between tunnel and open road safety regimes. The EU-funded ECOROADS (Effective and Coordinated Road Infrastructure Safety Operations) project aimed to overcome the barrier established by interpretation of two separate sets of European rules on road infrastructure safety management and tunnel safety inspections. The current rules do not require […]
Final Project Conference, Brussels, Thon Hotel EU, 10 May 2017, 09:00 – 14:30 The ECOROADS (Effective and Coordinated Road Infrastructure Safety Operations) team has the pleasure to announce the project’s final conference presenting the results of this two-year Horizon 2020-funded research project. In the presence of the European Commission (DG MOVE) and European road research stakeholders, this conference will present the results of the tunnel testing sites as well as the final guidelines. Download the agenda. For directions to the venue, click here. Download […]
A major new highway was inaugurated in Greece earlier this month running between Corinth and Patra. One of the tunnels along the route has been named in memory of Panos Mylonas, whose death in 2004 in a road crash inspired the creation of the road safety organisation RSI Panos Mylonas, ETSC’s long-standing member organisation in Greece. Vassiliki Danelli-Mylona, Panos’s mother and the organisation’s founder told Greek media: “It’s a special moment, very emotional for us and a vindication that strengthens us and gives us […]
A third of road deaths in the EU happen in collisions that involve a single motorised vehicle where the driver/rider and/or passengers are killed but no other road users are involved. These Single Vehicle Collisions (SVCs), and how to prevent them occurring, are the subject of a new report from ETSC, published today. Nearly 7300 road users lost their lives in 2015 in SVCs in the EU with around 100,000 such deaths occurring over the last ten years according to the data revealed in […]
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