Why the EU Road Safety Exchange is turning local

For years, Europe’s road safety conversation has largely taken place between national governments. Ministries compared strategies, enforcement systems and infrastructure policies, learning from countries that had managed to bring down road deaths.

But increasingly, the real decisions shaping road safety are made closer to the ground.

Speed limits on city streets. The design of intersections and crossings. Rules for shared e-scooters. Traffic calming in residential neighbourhoods. These are the kinds of choices that determine whether a street feels safe,  and they are often taken by cities and regional authorities.

Recognising this shift, the third phase of the EU Road Safety Exchange (EURSE) is placing cities and regions much more firmly at the centre of the programme.

That does not mean the national exchanges disappear. Ministries and national road safety authorities will continue to share experience on issues such as speed management, enforcement systems and infrastructure policy. But the programme is now opening the door wider to the authorities that implement many of these measures in practice.

And the interest is already there.

Cities such as Helsinki, Munich, Gothenburg, Bilbao and Leiden have expressed their willingness to share their experience with peers from across Europe. Each of them offers a different perspective on urban road safety – from street redesign and speed management to safer cycling infrastructure and the management of new mobility services.

The exchanges themselves are deliberately practical.

Study visits usually take place over two days. Participants walk the streets, see safety measures in action and talk directly with the people responsible for implementing them – engineers, urban planners, police officers and local policymakers. What worked? What didn’t? How difficult was it politically? What would they do differently next time?

These conversations, often taking place next to a junction, a cycle lane or a traffic-calmed street, are where the real learning happens.

National EURSE contacts would help connect the project with relevant cities and regional partners and ensure that lessons from local innovation feed back into national road safety strategies. At the same time, cities themselves can volunteer to participate in or host exchanges, opening their doors to colleagues from other countries facing similar challenges.

In a Europe where road safety performance can still vary dramatically from one country to another, sharing solutions that work – whether at national, regional or city level – remains one of the most powerful tools for saving lives.

And increasingly, those solutions begin on city streets.